


Paying the Ferryman

by RavensRevenge



Category: Criminal Minds: Suspect Behavior
Genre: Gen, Military, Pre-Season/Series 01, Torture
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-24
Updated: 2021-01-27
Packaged: 2021-03-16 12:02:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 20
Words: 133,536
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28956150
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RavensRevenge/pseuds/RavensRevenge
Summary: Mick Rawson and Sam Cooper meet in Iraq during the war; Sam has a job eating away at his soul and Mick has to survive an enemy ambush and time spent as a POW. Two damaged souls go on to form a strong friendship.
Kudos: 4





	1. Chapter 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I first published this story on FF (under penname maleshka) back in 2013 and recently I have decided to slowly move some of my stories over to AO3 given I rarely go on FF these days. On FF, PaulaP2013 graciously acted as my Beta, despite being unfamiliar with the show. Her help with grammar, Americanisms and general story flow were invaluable.**
> 
> **_While I much prefer the original Criminal Minds series (Hotch will always rule the CM waves!), this one did grow on me as I particularly liked the character of Mick Rawson and his interactions with the other characters. The largely unexplained but much hinted at history between him and Sam Cooper intrigued me and I thought I'd give it a go and explore one possibility. This is a story about a strong friendship, not slash._ **
> 
> **_Obviously this story is set largely in the military world, but any special terms or acronyms have been defined at the bottom; I am also English and many of the characters will be British, so there may be the odd colloquialism – please feel free to let me know if there is anything you don't understand._ **

Sam Cooper ducked gratefully into the tent, where the shade afforded some protection from the unrelenting desert sun. It had been many a year since he had left behind the ever-increasing bureaucracy demanded by FBI brass, but for all his time in Military Intelligence he was still unused to the fierce climates the current AOs seemed to offer.

The harsh winters on the slopes of the Hindu Kush in Afghanistan and the inescapable heat of the Iraqi desert offered such vastly different landscapes, and yet the desert at night could be almost as cold as the Afghani mountain ranges, while the opium fields in summer could be as unbearably hot as the sand dunes. Both countries were host to somewhat bleak but often very beautiful landscapes, the dull, earthy browns in high contrast to the vivid green vegetation that shadowed every waterway.

Cooper spent most of his time employed in PSYOPS trying to get the local population on side with the 'Hearts and Minds' tactic, and he enjoyed mixing with the everyday people; he had learnt so much about their culture and their customs. He had come to respect them and their fortitude.

At first, he had found it difficult to contend with the more mundane complaints he'd heard when he'd returned Stateside; forced to endure a lecture on the failings of the Bush Administration (as if he needed those to be pointed out to him) or on the rising cost of living. It all seemed rather ridiculous when the country he had just returned from was suffering through all the harsh circumstances of a war they had no say in.

He'd had to force himself to remember that everything was relative, that for some people in the States the rise in the cost of living really was a problem when so many people lived below the poverty line already. The problems were different, but they existed nonetheless.

His time spent with the local population, especially the children, seemed like time well spent and he enjoyed acting the part of friend and teacher rather than profiler.

Of course, that feeling could never last long in the Middle East.

His experience with the BAU had meant that he was often brought in to help with the interrogations of high value prisoners; most of them were relatively straightforward but some were far more problematic. He'd arrived at one FOB to find the prisoner he was about to interrogate had been stripped naked and was sporting several bruises; he'd been horrified and had reported those responsible but unfortunately it would not be the only time he would come across such abuse.

Cooper hadn't thought he'd ever fully settle into a military way of life, but he found that many of the men and women were good soldiers who wanted nothing more than to perform their duty. The atrocities of Abu Ghraib had, for a brief period, tarnished all soldiers with the same brush, but most soldiers had been equally horrified at the actions of a select few and strove to be better soldiers than the public seemed to believe they could be. _These_ were the men and women Sam felt proud to work alongside.

Like many of the soldiers who had seen active service in Afghanistan, Sam preferred his time there than in Iraq. In Afghanistan, the enemy may have used guerrilla tactics and suicide bombers to tragic effect, but at least the Taliban was a clear and cohesive enemy.

In Iraq, once Saddam Hussein's Regime had fallen and it became clear that there were no Weapons of Mass Destruction the war and the reasons behind it seemed to fracture; there was no single enemy army, but instead a whole host of combative factions, each vying for control over their own little parcel of land in the turbulent Iraqi landscape.

Objectives that had once been so definitive (end the Regime and liberate the people, and find the infamous WMDs) became so blurry that it was not always clear which groups were considered enemies and which were considered, if not friendly then at least not a threat either. As if that wasn't complicated enough, there were the foreign nationals who entered the country with their _'Purpose of Visit'_ stamped clearly in their passports for all to see: _'Jihad'_.

The briefing he was attending in the tent was about one such foreign national. He was waiting on the superior officers with his colleague, Hassan Saifa.

Saifa's parents were from Lebanon, who escaped to the USA after the Sabra and Shatila massacre in 1982 when Hassan was just a baby. He had quickly grown to love his new country but being raised in the Islamic faith, he found post 9/11 America a scary place to be; with his ethnic origin so clearly based in the Middle East, his religious beliefs were, for the first time, being held against him in the _'Land of the Free'_.

He had been in New York at the time of the attack, and like many in his community he was shocked and appalled by the massive loss of life that fateful day. He had only waited to finish his degree in Philosophy at Colombia University before applying to the military in order to appease his parents, who had both been so proud that their only surviving child had been offered a full academic scholarship to an Ivy League University. Due to his intellect and his language capabilities, he quickly found himself in Military Intelligence.

The Military had been quite frank with Hassan about the fact that they were going to utilise him as a tool. His looks, his religion, his ability to speak Arabic, even the loss of his older brother in the massacre, all of it would go on to make Hassan a truly capable interrogator. The prisoners were more likely to react to his presence, positively _or_ negatively, and therefore more likely to reveal something.

Sam had instantly liked the young man, who, in spite of his inexperience and a rather incongruous idealism that he still held tightly onto, had a good head on his shoulders. His quiet, watchful nature made him a natural at interrogation and Sam felt sure his partner would go on to achieve great things in his life.

However, he still couldn't help but feel a little sad that the young man's mental prowess and abilities, his very personality were being used as intellectual weapons in the war, something that surely could only lead to a jaded man by the end of it all.

"Looks to be quite a party gathering for tonight's operation," Hassan nodded to the soldiers waiting for their briefing.

All ready and waiting in the tent were various members of Special Forces, both American and British; the Americans had a large team from the US Army Rangers, while the British had one troop from the SAS with back up from a team of Paras from 1st Battalion.

The joint operation was in response to recent intel that suggested a HVT was operating out of a small hamlet, over 40 clicks away in hostile territory. There had been an increase in insurgent activity over the past two weeks that had already resulted in the deaths of two young US Marines out on patrol and several members of a local Shia mosque. The arrival of Syrian national, Abu Maktara, in correlation with those events seemed unlikely to be mere coincidence.

They had been unable to say what particular faction the man seemed to belong to as he had already been linked with three different groups, but his hatred of all things American was clear to anyone who understood a word of Arabic.

Sam took a moment to look around the room at the soldiers waiting for the mission briefing. He had never worked with Adams before, but the man's reputation within the US Army Rangers was almost legendary among his soldiers. He'd risked his career by running a lot of interference between his men and the higher ups as one of his former CO's had been looking to make a name for himself off the shoulders of the men beneath him, calling in unnecessary danger-close fire-missions and even firing on unconfirmed targets in his eagerness to earn a shiny new medal. Adams had not only managed to shield his men from following the ridiculous example set by their Captain, but had also managed to have the man removed from the battlefield altogether.

The SAS troop were chatting happily with the Paras, a few steaming mugs settled by their feet. Sam had come across a few men from the UKSF during his time out in the Middle East, and he knew that they tended to get most excited when they had a chance to do some real _'green work'_ , what they considered to be classic, behind-the-lines SAS soldiering; going into hostile territory to do what _should_ be a covert grab on a HVT was just such a mission.

He noticed one of the Paras seemed pretty young to be in the company of such hardened soldiers; his easy manner and bright grin seemed incongruous with their more severe surroundings and gave him the appearance of someone who should still be in school rather than in the military.

So intent was his focus on the men around him that he missed the entrance of the officers who would be leading the briefing.

"Sorry to keep you gentlemen waiting," one of the UKSF officers, Briggs, offered as he headed to the front of the crowded tent. "Let's get down to business."

"Abu Maktara has been cropping up in our local intel for a couple of weeks now and none of it is good," an American Officer from SOCOM called Mullins continued. "We have evidence linking him to an attack on a Shia mosque in Mirsana which left twelve dead, and as I'm sure most of you are aware, we lost two Marines just the other day.

"Our most recent intel was gathered by a British recon team," Mullins gestured towards the British soldiers in the room, which Sam took to mean that some of them had been involved in the information gathering exercise. "They've managed to find a possible residence, a small compound located near a hamlet about 15 clicks from Mirsana."

"As with any intel gathered on a recon mission in hostile territory, it is not necessarily going to be one hundred per cent accurate by the time we arrive on scene," Briggs warned. "I know a few of you have been getting pretty restless waiting for some proper green work, but don't get your hopes up just yet. We hope to have Maktara in a cell for interrogation by morning, but the enemy has been pretty mobile so far and there are no guarantees he'll even be in the area by the time we're ready to step off."

"The Brits have informed us that there is a pretty heavy insurgent presence in the surrounding area and not just in the hamlet," Mullins informed the men as he took a note passed to him from a nervous looking Corporal. He read it with a deep frown before continuing. "Our own techs have managed to pull some satellite images that back that up; the terrain is pretty flat and very arid, but there are some inconsistencies in the satellite imagery that suggests the earth has been disturbed where previously it wasn't. It could be nothing but the Shamal kicking up the earth, but you need to be prepared for some shallow little hidey-holes with some nasty little surprises inside.

"Provided all goes to plan, we'll get Maktara back here where Sam Cooper and his colleague Hassan Saifa will help with the interrogation; hopefully we can gain some intel on his friends and see about reducing the attacks in the area."

"Now that's a brief overview, obviously," Briggs stated dryly, earning a few chuckles from the men. "We'll be going into more detail of the terrain, infil and exfil points, team positions in the AO, equipment requirements and so on and so forth. We're going to be at this for a good part of the day, as we're hoping to be Oscar Mike at final light; so lads, you've got fifteen Mikes to get yourselves something to eat and drink and get your arses back here. Opsec is to be maintained at all times, so I trust you'll keep chatter to a minimum. See you in fifteen."

"Sam, Hassan," Mullins greeted the two men. "It isn't necessary for you to attend the rest of the meeting if you have other things to concentrate on. The details of the op aren't all that crucial to your part in this and I know you're supposed to be heading back into Al Sariya to the school, but I thought you'd like to know the rough outline, as well as the timeline."

Sam nodded. Mullins shared a similar distaste of bureaucracy, especially when it got in the way of looking after the men under his command, and the two had compared and contrasted the ridiculous demands made upon their time over an MRE and a cup of coffee many a time.

He had come to greatly respect the older man for his sensible and grounded approach to his job. There was never any glory-hunting with the man; his men and the mission always came first and the fact that he wasn't out to make a name for himself but had done so anyway was testament to the type of soldier he was. Mullins was a popular CO and one that commanded respect from _all_ allied troops and not just the American soldiers.

Briggs was another highly respected and well decorated soldier whose men in the UKSF were fiercely loyal to him. He had a much more stern countenance than his American counterpart but all that did was prove that looks were indeed misleading. The man's sense of humour was as dry as sand and as biting as the Arctic air and he could say more with a sardonic lift of one eyebrow than a whole Platoon could manage with the entire dictionary at their disposal.

"I appreciate the offer sir, but we _are_ expected in Al Sariya," Cooper said, a little disappointed as he had hoped to sit in on the briefing; he enjoyed watching and listening as the plan for an operation took shape. "We shouldn't be there for too long though, certainly no more than three hours. Would it be a problem if we came and sat in on the planning after that? It's always helpful to a successful interrogation if we start off with as much intelligence as we can gather on our suspect."

"I agree," Mullins responded with an understanding smile; Cooper had never liked being out of the loop. "There will be a guard outside, but I'll let him know to let you in once you return."

"If there's time after the planning has all been wrapped up," Briggs started, "Then I'll introduce you to the men that took part in the recce, or at least let them know to give you an overview. They'll be able to give you a brief outline of our suspect's current holding ground, his followers and behaviour and such; it means you're free to use whatever is useful from that knowledge in the interrogation."

"Do you think you'll get much out of him?" Mullins asked.

"I don't think we can say yet, sir," Hassan replied. "If he's here for Jihad and not a national, then he could be a true believer and we'll likely not get anything out of him, but there is always a chance he'll slip up – his videos have certainly had plenty of arrogant posturing."

"Well let's hope so; these attacks need to end. The note that young Corporal handed me earlier had news of another attack in Mirsana, only this time it was on the school. Thankfully the explosion was weaker than the one at the mosque and so far there are only three dead: two children and a teacher," Mullins shook his head in dismay. "The civilian casualty rate for this war is unacceptable!"

"There are no guarantees," Sam began hesitantly. He didn't like the recent hike in the death toll any more than Mullins, but he also knew that an interrogation of a HVT didn't always yield reliable results if any at all.

"I know that, Sam," Mullins nodded resignedly. "Just do the best you can, and fingers crossed, huh?"

"Of course," Sam agreed. There was never any doubt that the two men would do their utmost to gain any useful intelligence from Maktara before handing him over to the Iraqi authorities.

* * *

It turned out that Sam and Hassan had to stay in Al Sariya longer than they had originally planned, as one of the local goat herders who tended flock out in the surrounding desert-like landscape had possible information about a militant group of Ba'ath Party hardliners who were attempting to coerce people into fighting their cause.

By the time they arrived back at the camp, the briefing had just about wrapped up and the soldiers were sorting out the final logistics for the operation. Sam could hear them discussing how much in the way of ammo and supplies they would need, and whether or not they would need any explosives, should a full-frontal assault on Maktara's compound become necessary.

"Now then," came a thickly accented voice as a young Para came forward with an easy grin and offered a hand. "I understand you want the low-down on the recce work we did a few nights back?"

He received two nods in return.

Sam looked the newcomer over; it was the soldier he had deemed too young to be in with a group of hardened Special Forces soldiers. However, the easy, relaxed manner in which he interacted with the other soldiers during the mission briefing spoke of a man who was not simply comfortable with his position, but revelled in it.

He had left a seat at the centre of the table, not one on the periphery, and the rifle he had been cleaning before he noticed the two men had been placed down with great care _without_ resorting to an almost pantomime like slowness to the action that you would expect from someone brimming with self-importance, a trait to which many specialists were prone.

Sam glanced at the rifle; definitely a sniper.

He couldn't help but fall back on his profiling days and think about the LDSK's he had come across during his time with the bureau; characteristics could include a high intelligect with a highly focused and disciplined mind with great compartmentalisation. On the other hand, they could also be incredibly controlling, with egos to match society’s most narcissistic and a certain detachment from the world that served to separate them from the people they killed.

He could already guess at the young soldier's prowess with a rifle given his position with the UKSF, which also implied that his intelligence, at least, wasn't in question, as he had to have passed certain tests to even have the training.

He gestured for the man to continue and tried to ignore the urge to further profile him. The soldier led them to a side table after snatching a file from the large desk in the middle where the other soldiers were slowly beginning to disperse in order to get themselves sorted for the mission.

"There's not really a lot we can give as we were under orders not to get too close in case we were spotted and give Maktara an unintentional heads-up. The compound walls were high enough and the surrounding land low enough that we were rather limited in seeing what went on _inside_ the place.

"However, there was plenty of activity _outside_! There are regular two man patrols and they have a couple of dogs around the perimeter too. One is chained up by the main entrance, but the other goes on the patrol; it's why we're all smelling so sweetly," the soldier offered an unapologetic smile.

Sam knew that for many operations that required stealth, reconnaissance work or a grab mission such as the one they were heading for, the soldiers didn't wash or shave in the few days running up to them in order to allow any chemical products to wash off their skin and make a dog's ability to track them a little more limited – a potent enough aftershave could give even the best of ghillied up snipers away to the freshest recruit of an enemy force, never mind the dogs.

"We counted about fifteen different armed men working their way around the outside, but we've no clear idea if there are more inside the compound. This building here," the young soldier pointed on a map and then at a photograph, "seems to be where most of the men come and go, so we're assuming it’s acting as temporary barracks.

"There was a truck that pulled up to the compound when we were there, but it didn't go inside; crates were unloaded at the gate and then carried in. I think it is pretty safe to say these," he held up a photo of thick, wooden crates with heavy Arabic script printed on the side, "are not a result of their weekly grocery shop, so we're working on the assumption that they've got a mini arsenal in there, at least."

"Did you get eyes on Maktara?" Sam asked.

The soldier held up another picture.

"He didn't seem too keen on venturing outside much, and he never went further than a few metres from the entrance, but it was enough to confirm his presence. Of course, all of this is now old intel, but a spy plane flew overhead this morning and images confirm there's still a pretty heavy military presence there."

"Wasn't that a little risky?" Hassan asked.

"These planes tend to fly about 3 miles up, and it didn't circle the area it just did a pass over before heading on towards Basra. Maktara would probably be more suspicious if the airways were clear; we're in a war torn country and military planes passing overhead are not an uncommon sight. Besides, these are relatively new to the RAF; chances are they wouldn't have been able to differentiate between our spy plane and a C130 from that height."

"So they're prepared and he's certainly got a few men willing to serve him," Sam mused, trying to get them back on track. "What about the villagers?"

"No real interaction as far as I could tell; they all seemed pretty determined to steer clear of both the compound and the barracks. There aren't many people there; a few women, children and a couple of elderly civilians with no signs of any men."

"Lost in the fighting," Hassan mumbled.

"Probably," the soldier agreed with a shrug. "A lot of the local towns and villages had men strong-armed into fighting for the Republican Guard; the consequences were usually pretty severe if they refused. Men were executed and if their families were lucky, their deaths came on pretty quick too."

Sam noticed the slight tightening of the man's voice but there were no other outward signs that he was at all bothered by the information he had just shared. Sam had seen the evidence of what had befallen families whose patriarch had refused to pick up a gun in the name of Saddam Hussein's regime. The men were usually executed after being forced to watch the fate of their families; rape was not infrequent and a painful death was guaranteed. They acted as a good incentive for the remaining candidates, but Sam could have done without seeing what a five-year-old looked like after being stoned to death.

"Anyway, basically our guy, Maktara, is paranoid, smart and very careful. He's either got a strong enough character or a large enough bank balance to keep these men guarding him. I'd go with the former, because these guys seem prepared to mow down the goats that wander too close to the compound and that speaks to more than a paid professionalism; these guys are devoted to the man, whatever else.

"They stop what they're doing for prayers, even when out on patrol; the behaviour we observed at the compound, their dress, their actions in Mirsana, they all speak to die-hard Sunni fundamentalists.

“The way his men seem to react to him suggest that they fear him as much as they respect him, but they never seemed to hesitate acting on any orders that we saw. The villagers, who go out of their way to avoid him and his men, seem downright terrified of the whole lot of them. Maktara is going to be a tough nut to crack," the Para shrugged with his conclusion.

"It sounds like we've got our work cut out for us, Sam," Hassan grinned. He always liked the interrogations to be at least a little challenging.

"Thanks for sharing," Sam offered. "Don't think we caught your name, though."

"Oh, yeah, sorry about that," came a rather unexpectedly bashful grin. "Corporal Rawson, British Army's Parachute Regiment, 1st Battalion; everyone calls me Mick," he offered a sloppy salute and a mischievous wink.

"Sam Cooper and Hassan Saifa," Sam gestured to each of them by way of introduction.

"Mick? Not the most original of nicknames I’ve heard out here," Hassan responded with a grin, thinking of the many colourful nicknames he had come across during his time in the military.

"Sorry?" the young sniper asked, his confusion clear.

"Yeah, you know, being Irish and all, Mick just seems kind of obvious," Hassan pointed out with a shrug.

"You think I'm _Irish_?" Mick responded, amusement clearly tugging at one corner of his mouth.

"Your accent…" Saifa replied, suddenly unsure; clearly he was missing something.

"Welsh," Mick informed him with a small laugh.

"Welsh?"

"Yeah, Welsh, from Wales; Swansea if that means anything to you."

"Oh, fuck!" Hassan exclaimed softly. "I'm sorry if I've offended you or anything, but…"

"I'm not offended, mate, no worries," Mick interrupted and offered a friendly smile. "A few of you Yanks have got confused over this; if we don't talk like the Queen or have a heavy Cockney accent, then you guys tend to be pretty much in the dark. Then again, if you tried to get me to tell you the difference between someone from Canada and someone from the US, I probably wouldn't have a clue either – you all kind of sound the same to me too."

"Fair enough," Hassan laughed, relieved. On the whole, the US/UK rivalry was little more than banter; gentle and not so gentle ribbing seemed to be a way of life for some of the soldiers stationed together. However, there were always one or two soldiers, on either side, who seemed determined to find fault with those who were _supposed_ to be their closest allies. He was glad Rawson seemed to be of the more amiable sort.

"So…Mick?" Hassan queried.

"Short for Michael," the sniper supplied. "But I only ever got called that if I was in trouble for something; it's pretty much always been Mick."

"So no Army nicknames then?" Sam asked.

"A whole load of them," Mick grinned. "Most of them probably not fit to be repeated, some of them I have no intention of sharing and others I'll probably shoot you for using."

"Hey Annie!" came a shout from behind.

"Like that one," Mick offered with a roll of his eyes and a low moan.

"Annie? Do I want to know the reason behind that one?" Sam asked, amusement threatening to overtake him.

Before he could give an answer, the soldier who'd shouted at him jumped onto Mick's back and mussed up the younger man's hair.

"Get off me, Gav, you bloody idiot!" Mick swiped his hand behind his head, swatting the other man on the side of his head.

"Is that any way to greet a friend? I'm telling you mate, you've got to stop being so bloody mardy! Can you believe this op.? We're getting some proper green work - finally!"

"Like…Birmingham or somewhere?" Hassan asked Mick with quiet amusement, good naturedly taking a guess at the newcomer's very thick accent.

"Liverpool," Mick offered with a short laugh.

"Aye, we Scousers are so much better than those Brummie bastards!"

"Better not let Briggs hear you say that," Mick warned the older soldier with a smirk and a raised eyebrow.

There was always a lot of banter about where people came from; whether it was about the North/South, East/West Divide, rural versus urban, the _'best'_ cities to come from, or even the countries themselves, there was always a joke on hand. Being Welsh, Mick always got more than his fair share of comments directed his way and he was always glad to hear banter that didn't involve sheep or coal-mining tenors.

"No way is Briggs a Brummie!" Gav hotly denied.

"Yeah he is; Solihul," the sniper informed his friend.

"Well there you go, then, _posh_ Birmingham," Gav shrugged, as if that explained everything.

Mick just shook his head, well used to Gav and his ways. The man was older than him by several years but he was easily the most juvenile of all the soldiers Mick served alongside.

Gavin came from the ideal nuclear family: two parents and two children, they had even had a golden Labrador growing up. His parents had both worked and while they had never had an overabundance of money, they had never lacked for the necessities either. Gav liked to play the part of the working class hero, if only to wind up his staunchly Tory father who had served in the Falklands and was a huge fan of Margaret Thatcher.

Mick had never much cared about politics, finding most politicians to be pretty much the same no matter which party they claimed to represent, but he _did_ like arguing with Gav if only to watch the older man struggle through arguments that he didn't _really_ believe in.

"So…Annie?" Sam asked Gav, curious about its origins.

"Yeah, you know, Little Orphan Annie," Gav offered as though it were obvious.

"I wouldn't fit in the red dress," Mick grumbled as he glared at the older soldier and Sam was sure this was a frequent argument between the two. The former profiler wondered if Mick shared Annie's orphan status or if there was some other reason for the moniker.

"Then there's Annie Oakley, too, of course," Gav gestured to Mick's sniper rifle.

"Of course," Sam nodded with mock sincerity and directed an amused look at Mick, who responded with an eye-roll and a long-suffering sigh.

"You want to know the worst thing?" Mick asked. "He actually _tries_ to be this stupid; guy's got a degree from London's Imperial University in chemical engineering but he likes to spend his time talking like a Jerry Springer special."

"Ah Jerry," Gav nodded to himself. "Now _that_ is entertainment!"

"I'll leave you to your delusions," Mick shook his head in dismay. "I've got a shopping list I need to see to," he waved a piece of paper that contained the extra equipment necessary for the forthcoming operation. "See you again soon, Agent Cooper, Agent Saifa," he nodded before heading out the tent towards the armoury.

"You seem like good friends," Hassan said to Gav as his eyes followed Mick's exit.

He had been worried when he first joined the military whether or not his ethnic background would leave him an outsider, but on the whole, the soldiers saw the uniform before all else. He had suffered through the odd racial slur, but nothing severe and never without another soldier there to stand by his side. Now, years after joining, he was not only a part of the camaraderie but he revelled in it.

"Aye, he's a good lad, good soldier too; there's no one I'd rather have at my back," Gav nodded earnestly.

"You mind me asking?" Sam started. "Why the Army if you've got a chemical engineering degree?"

"Why not?" Gav shrugged nonchalantly. "I was never really fond of school all that much; I'm not thick or anything, I just never found it the be all and end all of life, know what I mean? And don't let Mick fool you for one second, because the guy might not have even finished school but he's still the smartest guy I know; I'm not the _only_ one who plays the idiot."

"I gathered that," Sam smiled, having already guessed that Mick Rawson was not the uneducated, blasé soldier he seemed happy enough to portray.

"I've got my own crap to get together before we step off, but I'll see you on the other end of it all, _hopefully_ ," Gav offered a sardonic grin, before waving his farewell and heading off to gather his supplies together.

"Sometimes I find it rather scary to meet the guys behind the guns and find out just who is first on the defence line," Hassan wryly stated. "A soldier who chooses a rifle scope over a microscope brings up all sorts of questions, even without the quirks," he nodded to the departing Scouser, who had taken to running in a dramatic but slow motion manner towards another of his brother-in-arms.

"Yeah, but then so does an idealistic Philosophy major who decides to specialise in Military Intelligence and interrogation," Sam replied with a pointed look. "Besides, they seem capable enough, even if they do make me feel like I'm one step away from a retirement home! Come on; let's go see what experimental gloop they're serving up in the mess tent this evening."

* * *

**_A glossary for those that need it..._ **

** Brass ** **_– slang term usually for the upper echelons of command, often referring to the bureaucrats rather than a Front-Line man._ **

** AO ** **– Area of Operation _– a military term used to denote an area where operations are being carried out; it can be as small as a village or as large as a country._**

** PSYOPS ** **. – Psychological Operations _– the_ 'Hearts and Minds' _tactic relied upon emotional or intellectual arguments to win over both enemy combatants and local residents to the other side, using all sorts of methods, including air-dropped propaganda leaflets._**

** FOB ** **– Forward Operating Base _– a secured military position, usually a base._**

** Abu Ghraib ** **_– a prison near Baghdad, where 17 US soldiers were accused (and 11 charged) of human rights violations and torture._ **

** Jihad ** **_– Arabic, meaning_ ** ** 'struggle' ** **_or_ ** ** 'to strive' ** **_and while it means more than the usual translation of_ ** ** 'Holy War' ** **_that is what it refers to in this context. It can also refer to a personal struggle to follow the Muslim faith as well as possible, or even striving to build a better Muslim society._ **

** Paras  ** **_– slang term for anyone in the_ ** ** Parachute Regiment ** **_, which is the Airborne Infantry of the British Army. The 1st Battalion is permanently attached to the Special Forces Support Group._ **

** HVT ** **– High Value Target.**

** Clicks ** **_– military slang, it can stand for time or for distance._ **

** Danger Close ** **_– is a military term used to denote that friendly forces are in close proximity to a requested air-strike, artillery support…etc…The danger increases/decreases depending on the weapons being used and of course on actual distance._ **

** UKSF ** **– United Kingdom Special Forces _– it includes both the SAS and SBS and many more to boot. Typically in the SAS, you have four men in a patrol team and four teams to a troop, each with their own specialities._**

** SOCOM ** **– Special Operations Command.**

** Recon ** **– Reconnaissance _– military term for the gathering of intelligence, also referred to as_ 'Recce' _work._**

**Shamal** **_– a wind that blows over much of Iraq and the Persian Gulf, often kicking up some pretty violent sandstorms._**

** Infil/Exfil ** **– Infiltration/Exfiltration _– drop off and pick up locations._**

** Oscar Mike ** **_– military slang for_ ** ** 'On the Move' ** **_._ **

** Mikes ** **_– military term, used to denote either minutes or miles._ **

** Opsec ** **– Operational Security _– pretty self-explanatory, basically, keeping those who_ need _to know as the only ones_ in _the know._**

** CO ** **– Commanding Officer _– again, self-explanatory, although you should note that the British also use_ 'OC' _which stands for_ 'Officer in Command' _or_ 'Officer Commanding'. __**

**__**

** LDSK ** **– Long Distance Serial Killer.**

**__**

** Ghillie Suit ** **_– is a set of thick, camouflaged clothing, designed to resemble thick foliage and to break up the silhouette of the soldier wearing it._ **

**__**

** RAF ** **– Royal Air Force.**

**__**

** C130 ** **_– a military grade plane that is mostly used for transport, but can also perform gunship duties, aerial reconnaissance and even aerial refuelling._ **

**__**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_Regarding the accent, I am British and certainly know the difference between the Welsh and Irish accents. However, the first time I saw CM:SB it was via YouTube and several of the comments were about how Matt Ryan had the worst Irish accent ever and it cracked me up, so I had to include it :)_ **


	2. Chapter 2

It had been eight weeks since the Abu Maktara mission went off without a hitch; both Sam and Hassan had been working relentlessly trying to get something from the man.

Sometimes in interrogations the process was quick and easy; valuable information was often unintentionally revealed in between the boastful rants and the hateful diatribe that tended to spew from their overused mouths.

Other times they didn't even get a name, as a prisoner would spend their time sitting and staring at the walls, never uttering a word; the only sign of life was the occasional sneer and sporadic looks of utter contempt directed towards their captors.

Maktara didn't fit into either of those categories.

He was happy to sit in silence or he was happy to share his opinions, but he would not be tricked or goaded into revealing anything he didn't want to reveal; he was an intelligent man and was careful enough not to let his arrogance betray himself. What he had told his interrogators was that he knew he had been lucky enough to receive a good education, and that because of that privilege it had been his duty to help his brothers in any way he saw fit, but beyond that they never got an easy answer.

Sam and Hassan would ask a question about his operation and Maktara would retaliate with a philosophical quandary and a lengthy verbal essay on the problems brought forth by the West and its need to interfere with the rest of the world - it had been a _long_ eight weeks.

It had been five days since an ambush devastated a Joint Forces patrol, resulting in eight dead and three declared MIA with several men injured.

Once the lead vehicle in the convoy was taken out by a roadside bomb, RPGs took out the one at the rear; the dispersion recommended between the vehicles drummed into every driver's training since Basic had been a small mercy, ensuring no other vehicles were caught up in those initial two explosions.

In the end, it had little mattered.

The ambush had been well set up, and with the rest of the convoy locked between the two burning vehicles on a narrow road through a small town, tall apartment buildings on both sides with a natural choke point either end, the rest of the men had been vulnerable to the sharpshooting and small arms fire coming from the enemy who were hiding in an elevated position.

Five of the dead were inside the exploded vehicles, four of whom died on impact. Sam had heard the fifth man being carried into the medical tent back at base, screaming and struggling to escape the fierce pain as firm hands pressed on burnt skin that had bubbled up and peeled away, leaving dirty, oozing wounds. The smell of burnt flesh and the sounds of utter agony coming from the medical tent were still common themes in Sam's nightmares.

The sixth man's death had been quick; he'd caught a bullet in the head from a high velocity rifle, while the seventh had struggled on all the way to Baghdad, making it through eight hours of surgery before his body finally gave in.

The injuries varied from burns to gunshot wounds to internal injuries from the concussive blast. Two men had been taken by CASEVAC to a hospital in Baghdad before being transferred to a medical base in Germany for specialist treatment in burns and amputations.

Since the attack, patrols had been increased and the men and women around base were more alert than ever, almost bordering on paranoia, with morale at an all-time low.

Like many armed personnel, they had allowed themselves to be comforted by the presence of a semi-permanent FOB. The illusion of security offered by a wire fence and frequent patrols and a constant manning of the several watchtowers that guarded the perimeter led to a more relaxed approach to their immediate surroundings.

However, despite their recent losses and the reassertion of the perilous nature of their job, most soldiers' thoughts were not dwelling on their own situation, but rather with the three missing men.

Sam had been saddened to hear that Mick Rawson was one of those men.

Iraq had a long and brutal past, as any nation must with such a colourful history. While Iraq itself was a relatively young nation, the lands it was standing on were anything but with Mesopotamia's rich and diverse history as its backdrop. The land between the Tigris and the Euphrates had been home to some of the most important civilisations of their times, including the Babylonians, the Sumerians and the Assyrians. These were civilisations famed for their advances in the written word, in mathematics and in various branches of scientific knowledge.

The fertile lands in these parts were rare in the harsh surrounding landscapes and because of that, there had been a constant struggle throughout the ages to maintain a grip on the irrigated farm lands that would allow their civilisations to grow.

Wars amongst themselves were soon replaced by other civilisations that had turned their greedy eyes to the productive land. First the Persians under Cyrus the Great, before Alexander the Great decided to move further East and started a chain of invasions from every empire with grand designs, from the Parthians to the Romans.

Even in more recent history Iraq had seen a lot of conflict; from the Ottomans to the global devastation of World War One. Even earning its independence in 1932 didn't see an end to the constant upheaval.

Internal unrest continued until Saddam Hussein's iron fist caused the population to fall into line behind him, until his invasion of Iran saw yet another bloody chapter in the land's history; some were brave enough to rebel but the consequences were fatal. The eight year-long Iran-Iraq war saw over half a million dead and left behind fierce resentment, huge debt and a terrible legacy of chemical warfare.

It was a legacy that was continued merely two years later when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait.

The invasion of Kuwait saw Hussein's former allies from the Iran-Iraq War turn against the Republic; a US-led coalition force invaded, intent on securing Kuwait's sovereignty. The Gulf War lasted about seven months and estimates on the number of deaths related to the war run as high as 100,000.

The latest Gulf War's death count was always increasing, with a disturbing amount of them civilians. Many of the civilians were caught up in the suicide bombings and the frequent IED explosions, but it was the deaths from those caught in fire-fights and airstrikes that were having the greatest impact.

Resentment towards the Allied troops was steadily building, even among the communities that had previously supported the invasion. Locals were becoming less and less inclined to help the Western soldiers, the fear of reprisals and the burgeoning anger over avoidable casualties causing too many problems to overcome. The growing animosity from the civilian populace along with the experienced warriors borne of a nation well acquainted with conflict and adversity meant that any soldier unlucky enough to fall into enemy hands was in for a hellish time from all sides.

The ambush had been well set up. The original path had damaged civilian vehicles that had been caught out by an IED blocking the way and the convoy, with no room to backtrack and desperate to avoid sitting out in the open with so many tall buildings surrounding them, had turned down a narrow street between two apartment blocks.

Sam had seen pictures of the burnt out vehicles and could only imagine the atmosphere in the alley once the bullets started raining down from above onto the soldiers below who were trapped between fire and concrete.

The brave actions of Rawson, Wallcroft, Anderson and Samson on the rooftops had ensured the other soldiers' safe retreat to the awaiting Chinooks and Sam imagined it was their determination to see a successful exfiltration of the wounded that had helped lead to their capture.

Well, capture for some of them at any rate.

Joseph "Joey" Samson had been the eighth man to lose his life. He was a quiet but much beloved member of his team and it had been a terrible blow to his many friends who found what remained of his body on the roof. The man had met a grisly end, in close proximity to a fragmentation grenade that had torn through flesh and bone leaving a barely recognisable body to identify.

They had found Mick's sniper rifle caught on a balcony below and while on the roof above they had found more blood that suggested Rawson, and probably his spotter, were injured, there was not enough blood to make any of them think their bodies would be found in one of the ditches lining the many roads out of town.

In the eight weeks that followed the Maktara incident, before the ambush, Sam had gotten to know Mick and some of his fellow soldiers a little better. Through many a shared meal in the mess tent, or a shared silence under the stars, even a quick chat in the queue to the latrine Sam had enjoyed the mischievous and sometimes acerbic manner possessed by the younger man.

Mick kept a closed mouth about his personal life and Sam couldn't ignore the profiler in him that picked up on every nuance of behaviour and every word that was left unspoken that suggested the sniper had lived through a rough start. He had never once pried, not because he hadn't been curious, but because he had picked up on Mick's tense and defensive posture when an innocent question into his past was deemed too intrusive.

Sam _did_ learn that Mick had left school at sixteen and joined the Army as soon as he could. Despite missing out on an extra two years of school as well as a university education, Mick was easily one of the brightest men he had come across during his time with the military. There were a few gaps in what some might consider _'the essentials'_ (Mick didn't know the first thing about the plot of Macbeth and he couldn't care less about any of the world religions, or the benefits of sine, cosine and tangent) but that didn't make him unintelligent and he was never shy in admitting his lack of knowledge in certain areas, happy to fill in the gaps in his education.

One thing Sam noticed right from the start was that Mick was a natural born profiler, and not just because the man's long-distance assessment of Maktara had been spot-on. The younger man could be a regular Chatty Cathy when the mood struck him, talking and laughing and seemingly oblivious to all else around him, but Sam had quickly learnt otherwise.

They had been in the mess tent - Sam, Hassan, Mick, Danny Wallcroft and Gavin Eaden. Sam had first met Gavin, an exuberant soldier from Liverpool, after the briefing for the Maktara op. and had quickly pegged the man as the class-clown, so to speak.

The conversation had become increasingly loud, bordering on crude once Gav joined them at the table and Mick had bantered back and forth trading insults as easily as breathing, never pausing and perfectly in sync. Eventually Gav had disappeared off and Mick had looked at Danny and asked him to keep a close eye on Gav as the guy was clearly very upset about something. Wallcroft had looked confused about the assertion but had never for one moment doubted Mick's assessment and promised to keep an eye on their fellow soldier.

Two nights later Mick and another soldier, Digger, had had to talk Gavin down from eating a bullet. In the process, they discovered a vicious Dear John letter from his long-time girlfriend and mother of his child. She was leaving him for another man and intended to take his child away from him; Gav still had another four months of his tour to serve before he could get home to address the problem and he had been terrified when, having phoned home two days before, no one seemed to know where his ex and their child had disappeared to, and had despaired of ever seeing his little girl again.

Sam had seen soldiers crack under far less and knew that being thousands of miles from home when problems arose that they were helpless to address was a terrible situation for the typical assertive behaviour of the average soldier.

Mick had talked his friend down quickly and quietly, soft-spoken but well-placed words drawing no extra attention from anyone else around but engaging Eaden’s full attention, empathetic without resorting to platitudes. He managed it all with a discreet professionalism and a fierce protectiveness for his fellow soldier that Sam was quite sure the Brass were not entirely appreciative of but that _he_ certainly admired. Mick helped to ensure that Gav was given compassionate leave to sort out his domestic problems before subjecting himself to a barrage of psych tests to assess his continued suitability to military life in the field.

Mick seemed to be a natural at reading someone's intentions, seemingly with very little evidence and certainly without being obvious about it at all. Sam had often come across Mick calming down some of the more volatile situations that can arise between soldiers stationed out in the middle of a desert with little of interest to do between missions. He was always calm and efficient, and sometimes blunt as hell to the point of rudeness and beyond, but he'd always been successful. His success in those instances showed a man much older than his twenty short years.

Mick's general intelligence came through in many of their frequent conversations; topics varied from the current political climate of the world, to past historical events to a wide array of literary references. He could calculate trajectory and factor in the Coriolis Effect and understand the various mechanisms of the bombs and IEDs commonly encountered in his work all seemingly with very little effort.

He spoke several languages, some fluently, and was able to engage the locals in a way that few other soldiers ever managed, instinctively knowing what topics to aim for first in an effort to put them at ease. It didn't hurt that his appearance was relatively non-threatening compared with some of the older, more severe soldiers who lacked Mick’s easy manner – indeed, several of the older widows in the local area that they frequently interacted with seemed to take it as their personal duty to fatten up the scrawny young man.

Some of his knowledge in a particular area was broad, based on the key factors and the most pertinent of information only, other areas were very specific and so well researched that Sam could always find _something_ to talk to the younger man about, even it was something as simple as the latest crossword.

Sam had found an unlikely companion in Mick and knew that had they met under normal circumstances they may both have passed each other by without a second glance. However, the relative isolation of the FOB and the recent lull in Special Operations had meant that they had the time to get to know one another properly, finding kinship despite the very different upbringings, beliefs and choices in their lives.

The thought of Mick, a young man who had clearly already suffered through some of the hardships life had to offer, in the hands of the enemy was a terrifying prospect and one Sam was helpless to do anything about. All he could do was help interrogate any prisoners who might be potential aids in locating the missing soldiers and there were no guarantees of success.

The clock was ticking and time was running out.

* * *

** MIA ** **_– military term meaning_ ** ** 'Missing in Action' ** **_._ **

** RPG  ** **_– a popular weapon, the_ ** ** Rocket Propelled Grenade ** **_speaks for itself_ ** **.**

** CASEVAC ** **_– medical short-hand for a_ ** ** Casualty Evacuation ** **_, usually by helicopter._ **


	3. Chapter 3

When Mick awoke, he really wished he hadn't. There was not one square inch of him that did not hurt, and while his head ached even as he teetered on the brink of consciousness the pain that was pulsating from his shoulder would not let him sink back into the abyss.

He tried to open his eyes so he could assess his surroundings. He already knew from what he could remember of the ambush that he was in deep shit but he needed to know just how deep before he could make any plan of action. As he slowly managed to peel one eye open, his left refusing to cooperate for some unknown reason, panic started to set in; he had opened his right eye and everything was still dark.

His sluggish mind and the continuous throbbing originating near his left temple indicated head trauma – was it so serious that he'd lost his vision?

It was only when he was jostled slightly that he felt a coarse fabric rub against his cheek and realised the truth, and while he was elated that he was not blind simply bagged, he could not help but worry about just how severe his head injury might be that it took him so long to recognise that fact.

He tried to calm his racing heart, panic would not help him, so he tried to refocus and thought back to the ambush, to the IED that had ripped through the lead vehicle and to the RPG that had blocked the rest of the convoy in by taking out the rear-guard…

_The Joint Operations Taskforce soldiers poured out from their Humvees and from the Land Rovers that offered little protection in such circumstances and instead merely acted as bigger, easier targets._

_He heard the clear echoing sounds of a high-powered rifle that indicated at least one sniper, and Mick, knowing his rifles better than most, recognised that the noise did not belong to a gun anyone on the JOT would be using._

_The smoke from the burning vehicles was filling up the narrow street and helping to cover the enemy insurgents' position, while at the same time helping to mask the soldiers below. There were agitated shouts from above and Mick used them as a targeting aid, firing towards the noise._

_The smoke was choking the soldiers below but the coughs were drowned out by the crackling fire of the burning vehicles, by the small-arms fire and the loud, echoing retort of a sniper rifle, but worst of all were the screams coming from the Humvee that had been leading the convoy. Mick could make out the smell of burnt flesh mixed in with the smells of burning rubber and diesel and took another few steps away from his own vehicle just in case the RPG made a reappearance._

_He wondered why it hadn't. Why, when the enemy had them surrounded and cut off, at a huge disadvantage due to the casualties already inflicted, the elevation and the smoke, why they were not being more trigger happy._

_Had they run out of heavy ordinance?_

_Did they have limited ammo and were trying to make sure every shot counted?_

_It didn't make sense to set up such an effective ambush point and not bring along enough weaponry to do the job._

_Was this something else, then?_

_Had the Special Forces Taskforce been specifically targeted or had the ambush simply been an efficient plan pulled together in a very short space of time without the necessary tools? The very thought of being purposefully targeted sent a shiver down Mick's spine as he thought of how the insurgents might have come to have that data._

_He covered the other men from his Landy as they hugged the buildings, guns aimed high. He could still hear the screams up front and hoped the soldiers closer to the burning man could help him, even if the most that they could do was to shove a dose of morphine into him and ease his pain._

_Danny Wallcroft, a man Mick had worked alongside since he enlisted, was on the radio, calling for reinforcements and giving the necessary coordinates. They would need help and need it soon, but Mick knew that their options were limited._

_An airstrike wasn't an option as it wouldn't just be Danger Close, it would be on top of the damn Taskforce._

_A Big Bird wouldn't do much good down such a narrow little road surrounded by tall apartment buildings as any damage it could inflict upon the enemy would just as likely rain down on them. Command wouldn't want to send in a troop carrier like a Chinook or a Black Hawk when it was known that RPGs were in play and such a big aircraft would be an easy target sitting in the air as the men made a FRD to secure a landing zone._

_Whether reinforcements were coming by land or by air, they would have to proceed with caution in order to make sure_ they _did not become targets._

_Mick wondered if they had enough ammo to keep the insurgents at bay but he doubted it; even if the men used their ammo sparingly, they were still clearly outgunned and out in the open as they were, often times suppression-fire was the safest way to move from point A to point B. They may have to rely upon enemy weapons, but they had to be able to get to them first._

_He took a quick look down the street in both directions and saw injured men being dragged to the sides by their comrades. He saw their current team leader, O'Connell, was down but clearly not out as he was spitting fire at the young Corporal who was manhandling him into a safer position; judging by the growing stain on the man's shoulder it had to hurt like hell being dragged like that, but such situations did not always allow for a delicate touch._

_Mick was closer to the Land Rover that had been acting as rear-guard and could tell that two of the men on the side of the explosion were dead, their mangled remains still grotesquely visible through the smoke and the flames._

_Wilde and Digger, the vehicles other occupants, were up against the wall and covered in blood, both clearly injured and badly shaken; Digger's leg was a mess and Mick knew the man needed an immediate Casevac before shock and blood-loss claimed him. Wilde's arm was clearly out of action but he was shakily helping out an American soldier as he used his working hand to feed in what ammo belts were left for the 50. Cal._

_Mick knew that they needed out of the narrow road, but their options were limited. The vehicles had only just squeezed down them in the first instance and now acted as burning barriers at both ends. There were few windows overlooking the road and those that_ were _there had bars over them._

_Mick signalled to Danny; he needed cover to go back to the Landy and look for something to cut through the bars. He headed to the back-passenger door, immediately behind the driver's seat and pulled out the bolt-cutters; he didn't have anything better for the job and he only hoped that the bars were narrow enough for the tool to grip round and cut through._

_Thankfully, the bars were pretty rusty in parts and that made for easier work, and after a few minutes all the bars were removed. The windows were high and not particularly big but Mick managed to squeeze through, gear and all, before signalling to Danny that it was clear to enter._

_The room was small but soon soldiers covered the Persian rug with dirt and dust and blood. Those that were too badly injured would stay there until reinforcements arrived, with a couple of healthy soldiers guarding them._

_Danny was once again on the radio informing Command of the new situation when Mick heard a whimper and rounded the corner, gun ready only to come face to face with a terrified woman hugging her two children close. She began muttering feverishly in Arabic and Mick understood enough of the language to know she was begging for her children's lives. Mick quietly promised her that they were not here to hurt them, but he could tell that she was not convinced._

" _Rawson!" came a command from next door. Mick returned to find O'Connell propped up against a wall with the same Corporal from earlier attending to his wound._

_He liked O'Connell; the man was with the US Rangers and he was a damn fine soldier even if a shit-scary leader at times, however, he was so full of vitriolic sentiment when it came to the Brass and the_ 'pencil-pushing, desk-jockey a-holes from the Pentagon' _, as O'Connell called them on his politer days, that everyone under his command felt comfortable following his orders, knowing that while he placed importance on rank and discipline, his world vision was not so black and white that he blindly followed the DOD's instructions without first making sure that the welfare of his men would not be compromised._

_O'Connell had little patience with_ any _soldier who was out to make a name for himself, especially with officers who should know better; instead, he believed that it should always be about the mission and the man beside you and not what the REMF's back in DC thought about your latest after-action report._

" _You, Wallcroft and Anderson are to follow Samson here and take the roof," O'Connell ordered, swatting at the Corporal as he tightened the bandage around his shoulder wound. "We need to clear the RPGs from the area. Some of these boys aren't going to survive if we have to move them before we can get them medical attention._

" _You take your rifle, Wallcroft will act as Spotter and the other two will keep you covered; this roof and the one on the other side need to be clear and we need eyes on the surrounding buildings. Word from Command is that the choppers, when they come, will land in the courtyard to the East so once the roof is clear you'll need to cover that area. Understood?"_

" _Yes, Sir!" Mick nodded and began piecing together his sniper rifle, getting it ready for immediate use before slinging it over his back and once again bringing his assault rifle to the forefront. They would likely meet resistance before they reached the rooftop and the echoing gunfire would act as a siren to the insurgents in the area. They would have no time to waste once their presence was made known._

_Both Anderson and Samson were with the US Special Forces, both holding the rank of Sergeant; Mick had only run into them a couple of times._

_Anderson was a complete arsehole, no doubt about it. His attitude towards any soldiers that were_ not _Special Forces was beyond deplorable as his arrogance refused to see a Regular as anything less than unnecessary and_ that _was on a_ good _day; however, he was a good soldier, an expert with explosives and entirely dependable when the shit hit the fan._

_Samson was a quiet man with deep spiritual beliefs; he obviously had trouble reconciling those ideals with his chosen profession, but he was a consummate soldier and always looked after the men on his team._

_They followed Samson out of the door and slowly made their way to the stairs visible at the end of the narrow corridor, guns ready and fingers on triggers ready for the first sight of an insurgent. There were other four-man teams behind them with orders to clear each floor as they worked their way through the building in an effort to secure their position._

_They were on the fourth floor when the first shots were fired. Anderson was on point and two shots had the insurgent down before he had even been able to raise his AK47 in their direction. Loud shouts were immediately heard from both above and below. Below, shots were being fired, suggesting that the other teams were beginning their sweep but it was the noises above that worried Mick._

_Knowing he had no choice but to walk into another potential ambush he did a quick double check on his gear as the rest of the team did the same, all too aware that they could not afford any mistakes once out on the open rooftops._

_Anderson kicked open the door, knowing there was no more need for subtlety; he immediately moved to what little cover the concrete door frame supplied as the insurgents on the roof opened fire._

_Samson tossed out a frag grenade, right into an area where several of the enemy had bunched up behind the inadequate cover available on the roof. There were a few shouts of alarm but the explosion was almost immediate and the cries of pain and the immediate distraction it created gave them their window._

_Mick was third out of the door, rifle at the ready, and immediately opened fire with short, sharp bursts in an effort to conserve ammo. While he left the men on their rooftop to the others, he and Danny got to work on the building on the other side of the street; assault rifle up and steady, he shot every target he spotted with a single head-shot, breaking from normal protocol of double-tapping them in yet another effort to conserve ammo._

_There were fewer men on the roof than expected and that was a welcome relief but it also raised more than a few concerns. Though the smoke had obscured much of their view, there were still occasions when they had had a good enough view to make out the number of faces and weapons pointed their way from the rooftops, and the number was significantly more than they had taken out._

" _The rooftops are all fucking connected," Anderson swore, furious at the idea that their targets had disappeared into any one of the buildings along the row of apartment blocks that ran along the main road, the small side road that the ambush had taken place on merely splitting up a long row of buildings._

_The apartment block on the opposite side was now empty on the roof and Mick could not make out anymore hostiles in the windows; he knew they had not killed even half of the number they had been up against and that meant that the surrounding area was now potentially crawling with insurgents looking to do them harm._

_A crackle on the radio deemed the interior of their particular apartment building secure and Wallcroft reported back their findings on the interconnected rooftops and the dilemmas that arose from it. The immediate response was that they should stay on the roof, rifles in hand and cover the men as they moved to the choppers that were inbound._

_The teams that had been securing their building were to secure the LZ at ground level and make sure it was safe for the choppers to make a relatively safe landing, ready to haul their injured comrades the moment the Birds touched the ground. There were so many sporting injuries, some more serious than others, that every set of available hands was going to be needed to transport them to safety._

_Once they received the landing coordinates, Mick set up his position with his sniper rifle, Danny on hand acting as spotter, and Anderson and Samson watching their six. None of them were comfortable with their position, all feeling too exposed by the many points of ingress and egress along the various rooftops. However, they had a job to do and there were too many men depending upon them below, many not in a fit state to defend themselves._

_The distant, echoing_ 'thump, thump' _of the rotors was a welcome sound that had everyone breathing a sigh of relief. Men began pouring out of the building towards the East, securing the LZ while those with injuries stayed behind, waiting for the all clear._

_Mick and Danny were scouring the land surrounding the LZ trying to find any potential threats; any that_ were _spotted were quickly felled by a shot to the head, fired with expert precision and no hesitation on Mick's part._

_While he and Danny were busy with the ground below them to the East, Anderson and Samson were nervously scanning the rooftops and the doors that potentially hid any threats. Ideally, they would have more men up there, actively securing the whole area, but they simply didn't have the manpower with so many out of action and ammo worryingly low._

_A doorway opened further down and the quick retort of Samson's assault rifle echoed off the surrounding buildings. The answering Arabic cries seemingly erupted from all around them but Mick had to ignore it all as he concentrated on taking out a moving target, complete with an RPG strapped to his back, trusting Anderson and Samson to have his and Danny's backs._

_He couldn't remember what happened after firing his weapon and hearing Danny's quiet mutter of 'kill confirmed', except for a blinding pain and a blanket of darkness._

From his bound hands and the bag over his head acting as a huge blindfold, he knew that he had obviously not made it to the chopper and that in the chaos that had been unleashed once the helicopter’s presence was known by the insurgents, he and possibly some of his fellow soldiers had wound up in the enemy's hands.

He half hoped Wallcroft, Samson and even that right royal prick, Anderson were with him because he couldn't bear to think about the alternative…that they hadn't made it off the rooftop at all. Another part of him, a part that his various years in military service had not quite managed to _completely_ mangle, a part that deep down knew better hoped against hope that they had somehow escaped altogether, that they were not in the same vehicle being led to the same place, undoubtedly about to endure the same hell.

He knew that the Geneva Convention had not held much stock with Saddam Hussein and his government, and he sure as hell couldn't see it being any different with the insurgents that were battling over the remains of the Regime. He'd already heard over the news that someone had declared that the teachings of Islam and not the Geneva Convention should serve as the nation's guidelines in their treatment of coalition POW's.*

Name, rank, serial number and date of birth, the Big Four, were not going to cut it and he'd been involved in the rescue of enough POW's to know that torture wasn't just common, but was seemingly carried out by rote.

He'd had training for it, of course, but he also knew from talking with those who had suffered through it that nothing could ever prepare you for some of the things that were thought up by cruel and sadistic guards.

Mick's mind, while still tempered by his aches and pains and the ever-growing desire to simply embrace the darkness clawing at the sides of his vision, was running at a mile a minute trying to remember exactly what his E&E and his TQ training had taught him about the particular situation he found himself in.

The biggest thing, he knew, was that time was everything. Not only was tracking the days important from a psychological point of view, but it could also have a very real affect in a much more physical sense.

Being able to discern guards' rotas, the day to day running of the prison, and the ability to distinguish events from one day to the next could make all the difference between a successful escape and a suicidal attempt.

It was also important in regards to his welfare; knowing when he had last had food and water, being able to give a good estimate between _'sessions'_ with his interrogators and if it came to chemical torture, if they started shooting him up with god knows what kind of drugs, he would need to try to hang onto a sense of time in order to estimate how long the side-effects may last.

Another thing his training had clearly emphasised was that the best tactic was to become the _'grey man'_. It was a difficult role to play, appeasing his captors without revealing anything, taking care not to rile them up or give them hope for a successful end to their interrogations.

The textbook answer of _'I'm sorry but I cannot answer that question'_ invited a lot of pain from frustrated interrogators who were eager to earn the credit of _'breaking'_ their prisoner. To swallow your pride and allow their taunting to go unanswered cost a lot in morale but the body needed to be as whole and as healthy as the situation permitted if escape was ever going to be an option.

Defiance was a regular showing in the movies, with the hero bravely ignoring the violent threats tossed his way, spitting in the face of the enemy and keeping up a non-stop line of witty insults as though he hadn't a care in the world; in reality that approach was likely to see you dead inside the first hour.

It was a fine line to walk, between defiance and submission, and Mick wasn't sure he could do it well enough to see through to the end of the day; he'd lived through entirely too much shit in his life to start pandering to some enemy OC with delusions of grandeur and a penchant for inflicting pain, but now his survival may well depend upon it.

Another important survival factor to remember was to take advantage of any and every opportunity to drink, eat and rest as maintaining strength was the only way that escape was possible; you were never going to get very far, even if your escape was timed to perfection, if your body gave up the ghost due to dehydration, malnutrition and exhaustion.

Mick remembered all those things and knew that while his timing might already be a little off due to his unintended siesta, it should be easy enough to pick up so long as he didn't spend the rest of his time blindfolded. His trousers were dry and he didn’t yet have a burning need to relieve himself, so he certainly hadn’t been unconscious long enough for that to be an issue.

Unfortunately, even though all those important pieces of information were passing through his mind, along with so _so_ much more, one thing his instructor had taught him seemed to shout at him: the longer they have you, the harder it is to escape.

* * *

** IED ** **_–_ ** ** Improvised Explosive Device ** **_, a well-disguised bomb hidden, usually with a small blast radius but can be quite powerful._ **

**Big Bird** **– _nickname for an attack helicopter, such as the_ Apache, Cobra _or_ Viper** **_helicopters, armed with a chain gun and several sets of missiles._**

** Chinook ** **– _a huge tandem rotor helicopter (two sets of rotors, front and back) that is used mainly for carrying troops and supplies._**

** Black Hawk ** **– _a multi-purpose helicopter that is largely used for moving troops and supplies, or for_ Casevac _purposes._**

** FRD ** **_–_ ** ** Fast Rope Descent ** **_, basically abseiling down a rope, often from a helicopter._ **

** Suppression-fire ** **_– When short, sharp bursts are fired to keep the enemy pinned while moving position or covering to allow someone else to do the same, also called_ ** ** 'Cover-Fire.' **

** 50\. Cal. ** **– 50\. Calibre – _a heavy-duty, very powerful gun._**

** DOD ** **_– The US_ ** ** Department of Defence ** **_, in the UK we have the_ ** **MOD _or the_ Ministry of Defence _._**

** REMF ** **– Rear Echelon Motherfucker _– a not so very politically correct term used to describe the men and women who do not work on the front lines._**

** AK47 ** **– Avtomat Kalashnikova _– an infamous assault rifle developed in the former USSR. Due to its easy use, durability (it can survive just about anything!) and low production costs it is_ the _most popular assault rifle in the world since its initial introduction to the world in 1947._**

** LZ ** **– Landing Zone.**

** POW ** **– Prisoner of War.**

** E&E/TQ ** **– Escape and Evasion/Tactical Questioning – _the US equivalent is_ SERE Training, _or_ Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape. E&E _speaks for itself, the_ TQ _is all about the ability to resist interrogation as well as how to carry one out._**

** The Big Four ** **– _the only pieces of information that, under the Geneva Convention, the enemy is allowed to ask for: name, rank, serial number and date of birth._**

**_* This was actually said by Iraq's former Foreign Minister, Naji Sabri._ **


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter has a little violence in it and makes references to torture – please avoid it if you're easily squeamish or may be affected by any possible triggers.**

The vehicle had been stopped for about half an hour, as far as Mick could tell, and he wondered what was happening that they were not moving him straight away. Eventually, there was a cacophony of voices as several different people shouted out orders. He wondered if the apparent lack of any cohesive chain-of-command would play in his favour or against him; he suspected the latter.

Pulled from the vehicle and hauled along before he could find his footing, he was brutally dragged across the hard ground, jarring his injuries while heavy-booted feet sought to add further harm, kicking him as he was pulled passed them. Mick eventually found himself being manhandled into a cool building but with the bag over his head still hindering his sight he was forced to rely upon his other senses.

The sounds echoed off the walls, suggesting an area with hard surfaces and little to no furniture. He heard people chatting away in Arabic and he wasn't sure whether or not it was a good idea to give away his knowledge of the language; he could use it against them and gather the relevant intelligence needed for escape, or he could use it to try and relate to his captors. He had heard nothing outside except for the men herding him and the engines of at least two nearby vehicles, one of which he had been hugging the floor of for at least two hours, a time which implied they were in a remote location.

He had caught a faint whiff of gunpowder that suggested arms fire, but he had heard no gunshots on their approach. Perhaps the local militia had a small range set up for target practice; continual use of weapons in a concentrated spot would account for the lingering scent.

He could also smell burning wood and baking bread. The beehive-shaped clay ovens were a familiar sight in the isolated hamlets that were spread throughout the region, but he had heard no women or children, which would be the usual sounds in such a location. He suspected that while he was likely being held in a hamlet, it was one long since abandoned by the civilian population and was likely being run by one of the many rebel factions that permeated the Iraqi countryside.

He was roughly shoved and lost his footing. With his hands bound and his vision impaired, as well as the lingering nausea, he had no hope of maintaining his balance and fell hard to the floor. He could hear his guards laughing above him. A kick to his stomach while he was struggling to rise drove all the air out of him, leaving him breathless, and he was helpless as his other guards, spurred on by the initial assault, carried out their own violence upon his body.

A loud shout of _'stop!'_ in Arabic brought the beating to a close and Mick laid gasping for air, trying not to jar his already injured shoulder. He was dragged up onto his knees and the bag was ripped off his face. Once his only working eye had time to adjust to the light he surveyed his surroundings, trying to gain an appropriate assessment of his circumstances.

He gave himself a quick once over first, given that he was already looking down at himself, fighting the need to throw up. He had suspected that they had searched him when he was unconscious as he certainly felt a lot lighter. Now he could see that they had stripped him of just about everything but the clothes on his back. His weapons, his Bergen, his webbing, his ammo, his armour, even his belt had been stripped from him. There was a stain creeping up over the back of his right shoulder, indicating a wound to the high right of his back.

The room was dark and bare but for a single chair a few feet away from a rickety looking table and, more worryingly, a hook cemented high into one of the walls with a few surrounding marks that Mick could only assume were bloodstains. The floor was compacted dirt and there was only one high window. There was a dim but unshielded light bulb hanging from the centre of the ceiling that gave a flicker every now and again that spoke of poor connections.

There were five men with him in the room altogether. For the most part, the men surrounding him had no identifiable uniform; some men were dressed in dusty dishdashas, while others were bedecked in old fatigues of varying origins. Some men wore the traditional kufiyah scarfs around their necks, or wrapped around their heads.

They were of varying ages and Mick's wounded pride ensured he was more than slightly pissed off at the fact that he'd been captured and beaten by a man who looked no older than sixteen. The other men looked to be in their early to late twenties, except for one.

The leader of the group looked to be in his late forties, old enough to have served through both the first Gulf War and the Iran/Iraq War, and judging by the man's clothing and posture he was clearly a military man through and through. He was looking at Mick very much as though he were a hungry cat watching a bird with a broken wing.

"Please, forgive my men," he offered with a smile that was anything but reassuring, speaking English with barely a hint of an accent. "They are not educated like you and me." He brought over the lone chair and gestured to it. "Please, sit down."

Mick was pulled to his feet and he stumbled over to the chair. He could feel his nausea rising as the thought of interrogation came to the forefront of his mind. He had hoped that he would at least have the chance to lose the concussion before the questioning started as he certainly needed a clearer head to keep his focus and the thought of any more head injuries adding to his confusion was a worrying one.

"I am Fahim. Please, what is your name?"

Despite the genial tone Mick sensed the man was getting some sadistic pleasure out of seeing his enemy so helpless and entirely at his mercy. There was a gleam in Fahim's eyes that was just a bit too bright and a readiness in his stance that was just a little too eager.

"Mick," the sniper replied, finding talking more difficult than he expected. His mouth was dry and his throat sore, and it felt as though he'd swallowed half the desert. He didn't give his surname. It was allowed under the Geneva Convention's Big Four but he would not offer any more than he needed to in order to survive and follow his oaths.

"Mick," Fahim said, more as though he were merely sounding it out than addressing the soldier before him. "Mick, you see that you are our prisoner. We can be good to you, but only if you are good to us. Understand?"

Fahim was clearly waiting for affirmation, but Mick wasn't sure what to say. There was no way he could be _'good'_ to them, as he knew exactly what that meant. He was not going to be giving away patrol routes, or base locations, or informants in the Iraqi community. He could only give his name, his rank, his serial number and his date of birth, answering all other questions with _'I'm sorry but I cannot answer that question'_ , or words to that effect. He had enjoyed the challenge of his E&E/TQ training, but it all seemed so inadequate in the face of the unwelcome reality that desperately called for such skills.

Fahim narrowed his eyes at Mick's lack of confirmation and the sniper could already envision painful retribution for his reticence.

"Your people, they will not find you here. You cannot escape. There is a lot of desert and no water, no food. No one will help you. Do you understand?"

Mick could feel his morale take a swan-dive at such a statement, even though he knew not to take everything his captors told him at face value. If he ever _did_ manage to escape, the lack of water would be a huge problem and being caught out in the cold desert nights even more so. If they really were so isolated, chances of a friendly patrol passing nearby were next to none.

"I understand," Mick offered. He would always have his doubts as to how much he could trust what he was being told, but he thought _that_ particular titbit was probably quite accurate, and he'd rather concede on that than on something else.

Apparently Fahim was satisfied with receiving an answer and moved towards the table. Mick saw some of his gear spread out on the surface. His assault rifle and his Browning were there, along with his knife, but he could not see his sniper rifle. They had his map of the AO which, thankfully, was unmarked leaving the enemy with no new intel on allied positions. He caught sight of his last two ration packs, and, despite the nausea, he wished he had some way to hide them away, fearing that in the very near future food, or the lack thereof, would become a major issue.

He saw Fahim run his finger across the barrel of his Browning and wondered if he would be killed with his own sidearm. He could see no reason why they would have gone to so much trouble if they were simply going to kill him, but he couldn't place all his faith on the fact that they had kept him alive _so far_.

"We will not be staying here," Fahim informed him, still looking over Mick's gear. "We go further into the desert. You will not find rescue. Please, stand. We must leave now."

Mick tried to do as he was told and stand on his own two feet, but the nausea coupled with his injuries from both the rooftop and the more recent beatings proved too much. Before he could get fully upright, his vision darkened and he felt himself list helplessly to the side before one of the insurgents yanked up him by the hair. Mick couldn't help the cry of pain that escaped and tried desperately to ignore the sneering laughter that followed. He needed a firm assessment of both himself and his situation before he could even _think_ about escape and further injuries caused by his defiance would not help.

He was momentarily blinded as he was dragged into the bright sunlight and when his eyes adapted to the change in light once more, he saw that he was in a small compound. He could make out rooftops peeking over the high walls that suggested there was a small village or a hamlet beyond. The courtyard was quite large and he could see a small firing range at one end where four enemy combatants were milling around. He looked round and noticed that there were a further fifteen soldiers inside the compound, with most of them in a small, concentrated group in the centre, next to a straggly looking tree. With a further glance, he realised why.

His long-time friend and fellow Para, Danny Wallcroft, and Anderson, from Ranger Company, were half-hidden by the angry throng of men that surrounded them. He could not see Samson. Mick was given a vicious push that sent him falling and he landed painfully on his already injured shoulder. He could feel the blood dripping down his back once more and hoped they would attend to his wound before the risk of infection arose.

He saw Danny try to rise, anger at the way his friend was being treated overcoming common sense. Mick, fearful of what consequences Danny might face for any act of defiance, quickly made eye contact and gently shook his head. Thankfully, Wallcroft took heed and settled back down, feeling entirely powerless and simmering with rage.

As Mick was once again dragged to his feet and hauled over to the other two men, he took the time to assess them. Danny was looking a little worse for wear, having clearly suffered a similar greeting to the one Mick had just endured. However, other than that the Para looked relatively unharmed and Rawson hoped there were no injuries hidden beneath the dirt and clothing.

Anderson was a different matter altogether and, despite their antagonistic working relationship, Mick was horrified to see the state of the Army Ranger. He was lying on his right side and his entire midsection was bright red with fresh blood and through the torn clothing Mick could see jagged entry wounds in Anderson's left side, where shrapnel had found the gaps in the body armour. There was a large wound across the left side of his face, just above his temple, and Mick couldn't hide the wince when he caught sight of glistening white amongst all the blood. His left arm was missing a chunk of flesh and the wound had a loose and ineffective bandage wrapped around it.

Anderson was awake, but clearly not conscious of anything but the pain he was in. The gasping breaths and the rattling in his chest indicated that he did not have long in the world. The wounds all looked as though they were received on the rooftop before their capture and Mick wondered why they had bothered to bring Anderson with them as the man was clearly not going to survive without urgent medical attention, which they certainly didn't seem inclined to provide. He hoped they had not interrogated the wounded man in a last-ditch effort for information gathering.

Mick took another quick look around and wondered if the delay was for Samson. The answer was quickly provided as three different vehicles entered the compound and Mick and Danny were hauled up onto their feet and dragged over to the same battered Toyota pickup. Two of the insurgents loaded their bergens and weapons into the back of the last vehicle. Mick struggled to turn round and see what they were doing with Anderson, only to wish that he hadn't.

Fahim stood over Anderson's unmoving form, talking quietly to one of his men and clearly unhappy with the answer he received. Mick caught sight of the Browning in his hand and was both shocked _and_ royally pissed off to see his own weapon in the hands of his enemy. He had barely had a chance to process before he saw Fahim kick Anderson over onto his back, raise the gun with a steady arm and fire. He walked towards the second vehicle without pause.

Mick had seen Anderson's body jerk with the shot and was dismayed once he realised that instead of being a kill shot, Fahim had shot the Ranger in the liver. Rather than allow the soldier a quick and painless death they had simply increased the level of pain he would endure until blood loss and shock induced unconsciousness and death.

Fahim's obvious sadism did not bode well for his remaining two prisoners.

* * *

Sam was beyond exhausted and more than a little disillusioned. He had just completed yet another interrogation for the CIA, his good name in the profiling world even now bringing him to the attention of others.

Mahir Azzam had been brought in by a Delta Team on intel collected by the CIA. The Intelligence Agency were convinced that Azzam was a member of AQI and involved in the upper echelons of command. They wanted information on cells operating inside the war-torn country as well as international financiers and links to the larger Al-Qaeda divisions, particularly in Afghanistan. The Agency was still desperate to find Bin Laden and that desperation often led to extreme measures being taken to ensure answers.

The BAU had torn away at him, piece by piece, as he saw just what man's inhumanity to man really meant. Night after day after night, he had been forced to see the very worst of human nature and it often felt as though he had been infected by the atrocious things that he had been forced to analyse, as though the evil that ran through their unsub's veins, ran through his too, polluting his very core. It was a hard job and the agents he had worked with had suffered alongside him.

Of course, back then the directors in the Hoover Building were not as concerned with the mental well-being of the people under their employ as much as they were about the quality (and seemingly the quantity) of the paperwork being turned in. His actions were continually dictated by those in higher positions who didn't understand the way profiling worked and demanded instant success or assigned a new case.

When too many killers managed an extra victim because he was so busy battling interfering directors and fighting for the right to continue working a case the section chief deemed at a dead end, when a former team-member emptied her brains across her kitchen floor because the brass seemed more concerned about correct protocol than a traumatised agent, when he had lost all faith in those running the Hoover Building, _then_ Sam decided he needed to get out. He would never go back to the FBI, not unless something changed and he could trust the person sitting in the Director's chair.

Once he left, he felt as though there were few options open to him. He had spent his entire career building up the BAU with a select few. He was proud of that work, convinced of its importance in crime-solving and even crime-prevention, but it was all he knew. Intelligence work seemed like the natural step but he could not find it within himself to work directly for the likes of the CIA, NSA or even DHS.

With wars being fought in both Afghanistan and Iraq and the continuous threat of another 9/11, military intelligence was vital. Sam felt more comfortable answering to the more visible (and therefore more accountable) Pentagon officials than the nameless, faceless entities that seemed to exist within the main intelligence agencies. Of course, there were times that Sam crossed paths with the CIA, sometimes even willingly.

He had never considered himself a naïve man, the BAU had long since seen to any shred of innocence that had survived his tumultuous childhood, and he had recognised upon entering the Military Intelligence Corps that he was often going to be working in the grey areas. He did not see waterboarding as a grey area, no matter what position several key members of the Republican Party seemed content to maintain.

That the CIA could get away with employing the same treatment that saw several soldiers quite rightly sent to prison, seemed beyond the realms of hypocrisy. _'Enhanced interrogation techniques'_ were not all that enhanced, as it appeared to Sam that _'enhanced'_ simply meant that someone with a basic medical knowledge was on hand to revive their prisoner.

Cooper had seen the state of some of the prisoners in Abu Graib and felt as though justice necessitated a long prison sentence and Dishonourable Discharge papers for all involved. He had just spent the past three hours standing in a cold, concrete room as two interrogation _'experts'_ for the CIA systematically tortured a man they _suspected_ of involvement in AQI and there would be a short report, most of it likely redacted, and there would be no repercussions. He had signed confidentiality clause after confidentiality clause and the closed mouths helped further ensure his own anonymity in the _'enhanced interrogation'_. He felt more than a little sick at it all.

What made it worse was that _sometimes_ the torture paid off. _Sometimes_ , they were given intel that was vital to shutting down an operational terrorist cell that was preparing for a huge strike against an allied or civilian target. _Sometimes_ the torture resulted in lives saved. _Sometimes_ the ends _did_ justify the means as the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few and Sam despised himself for ever thinking such a thing.

He had always believed in the justice system. He knew it had its failings, as all systems do, but on the whole he agreed that a person should be tried in a court of law. He believed in _'innocent until proven guilty'_. He believed that everyone had the right to a defence. He believed that everyone deserved the _same_ civil rights, regardless of race, religion, colour, gender or sexuality _and_ regardless of their crimes.

There were always those he hoped the law came down on especially hard, and on the whole, most of the cases that had passed his desk back when he worked in the BAU saw convictions, and due to the usually horrific nature of the crimes perpetrated those convictions were often carried out to the full extent of the law.

Out in Iraq, justice appeared to be in short supply and as a rather fluid concept. It seemed hard to fathom that they were here to promote the joys of a democratic system with a strong legal system at its core when they themselves were committing crimes of such an inhumane nature and were getting away with it.

He had needed to escape the small concrete rooms, the muffled screams of a man struggling futilely against his bonds, the unemotional agents who had not listened to a word of his protestation.

He had another interrogation in just under an hour and the prisoner was someone who potentially knew the location of the three missing soldiers. He needed to gather his wits and distance himself from what he had just been made a party to. What was more, he needed to make sure that he had not been infected by it.

He didn't know Anderson very well, but Mick Rawson and Danny Wallcroft had become good and easy friends over their short acquaintance. He felt particularly drawn to Mick and felt a need to look out for him, as he was obviously a young man that had already lived through a lot. The thought of what they must be enduring was almost crippling, as vivid images of a torture that was far more gruesome than waterboarding plagued every nightmare.

He knew there was the possibility that torture could extract a quicker route to finding the three men, his friends, and with that thought he felt as though his blood had been replaced with oil: thick and sluggish, poisoning him as it made its way around his body. He didn't _want_ these thoughts. He didn't _want_ to think of torture as a viable alternative to profiling. He didn't _want_ to taint himself any more than he already had done. But most of all, he didn't _want_ his friends to suffer.

There would be no easy answers and he dreaded to think how far the interrogation might go. All three men were involved in Special Forces and while they were usually only ever told what they needed to know in order to carry out their latest mission they also had access to more intel than the average soldier.

Patrol routes and base locations could come from anyone, even the local civilian population, but Iraqi informants often dealt directly with a Special Taskforce, laying out their knowledge in front of those who could make the most use of it. Special Forces also tended to know the location of other critical missions, if not the details. There was so much vital information in their heads that had the possibility of affecting so many people, so many lives, and it could all potentially fall into enemy hands.

Since the men had been captured, steps had been taken to mitigate any potential risks. Meeting points and drop sites had been observed to see if there was any evidence of the men having talked, but so far there had been no indication that any of the insurgents knew more than they had before.

Informants were being pumped for information about detained soldiers and patrol routes were being altered to accommodate some of the more remote regions around the ambush site. But nothing had turned up and everyone was getting desperate. And desperation often led to the kind of scenes he had just escaped.

While the BAU had gnawed away at his soul piece by piece, it seemed as though he had sold it wholesale to the Devil the moment he joined Military Intelligence and he wasn't sure he could ever buy it back.

* * *

** Bergen ** **– _a framed rucksack of varying sizes used by the military._**

** Webbing ** **– _military belts, packs and pouches. Officially called_ Personal Load Carrying Equipment _, but_ 'webbing' _is used more frequently._**

** Dishdasha ** **– _a full-length, long-sleeved garment of traditional Arabic dress._**

** Kufiyah Scarf ** **_– it has many other names but this one is named after the Iraqi city of Kufa, so seemed more appropriate. It is worn worldwide now as a fashion accessory but is a traditional Middle Eastern headscarf used to protect the wearer from sun and sand alike._ **

** AQI ** **_–_ ** ** Al-Qaeda in Iraq ** **_._ **

** CIA ** **_– the_ ** ** Central Intelligence Agency ** **_. It is the US equivalent of the UK's_ ** ** MI6 ** **_and deals primarily with international situations._ **

** NSA ** **_– the_ ** ** National Security Agency ** **_. It is the US equivalent of the UK's_ ** ** MI5 ** **_and deals primarily with domestic situations._ **

** DHS ** **_– unlike for us Brits, it is not a sofa specialist store but the_ ** ** Department for Homeland Security ** **_._ **

** Waterboarding ** **_– a form of water torture that involves covering the face of a restrained person with a cloth and pouring water over the covered airways, creating the sensation of drowning. The CIA has only confirmed its use on three Al-Qaeda suspects, supposedly with the permission of the Department of Justice. Some Republicans, (most notably, Dick Cheney) refused to see it as a form of torture, despite the documented physical and psychological effects, and a leaked memo referred to it as an 'enhanced interrogation technique'._ **

** Dishonourable Discharge ** **_– removal from the military for the more extreme misbehaviours (murder, sexual assault…etc…) that sees all veteran's benefits taken away and has a real stigma attached to it. In some States, it is seen as being similar to a criminal record and so hinders employment and it is illegal to own a gun with a DD._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **I in no way condone torture and am merely trying to give a reason for the fact that Cooper seems to be horribly jaded from his time in the military.**


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **This chapter refers to methods of torture (although nothing too graphic) and has some unpleasant themes. Please proceed carefully if this might adversely affect you.**

Finding Anderson's body had been a real blow to morale. It was clear the man had suffered and Sam had heard directly from Adams, a well-liked and highly respected US Ranger whose patrol had made the gruesome discovery, that while Anderson had seemingly been spared a final interrogation, the injuries he'd suffered from the rooftop had likely left him reeling in agony until the end.

They had only found the body two weeks ago but the state of decay on the body suggested that Anderson had likely died the same day as the ambush. Shrapnel from the grenade blast had torn its way through the gaps in his armour and there was significant damage, tears _and_ burns, to his left arm, another indication that he had likely been too close to the very same blast that had killed Samson.

The head wound had been large and gaping and Adams had been amazed that it hadn't been enough to kill the Sergeant back on the rooftop. By the very fact that he had been taken in the first place, it was likely that not only had Anderson been alive, but probably even conscious during his unfortunate extraction, encouraging the enemy to take a gamble on him surviving long enough to be useful.

The gunshot to the liver must have delivered the final blow once he was deemed unlikely to survive by his captors, as the Sergeant would have bled to death long before arriving at the compound had the injury been sustained back at the ambush site.

Sam shuddered at the very thought as all of his profiling knowledge came to the forefront of his mind. For someone to shoot Anderson in the liver, when it was _clear_ the suffering man was dying anyway, spoke to an intense sadistic streak and did not bode well for the other soldiers.

The compound had been found as a result of an earlier interrogation. The prisoner had not been a member of the same rebel faction that held the captive soldiers but skirmishes between the two groups meant that they were aware of some of the locations used by the aggressive faction. Patrols had been altered to take in the possible locations, but so far they had been unable to find anything but Anderson's body and a newly abandoned compound.

Sam had not seen the place himself, merely forced to rely upon first-hand accounts and photographic evidence; however, it was clear that the compound had not long been empty. Recent newspapers were scattered about the place and fruit and vegetables were soft but not yet completely rotten. How anyone could have lived with a body outside their front door, slowly decaying in the desert heat, was beyond Sam, but he supposed it was a question of need. The compound was very compact and had everything the insurgents might need in the way of bare essentials.

There was a bunkhouse full of beds and a relatively well-stocked kitchen as well as a huge washroom complete with showers and basins. There was even a small firing range set up at one side of the compound. What had chilled Sam, however, were the photos of what was clearly an interrogation room, complete with hooks in the wall and dried blood spatter. He wondered if Mick and Danny had had to face questioning there early on in their capture.

There had been no videos of the insurgents and their captives on Al Jazeera or other Middle Eastern networks. It limited the international media's focus and therefore invasion into the lives of the missing men, but it also meant that there was no confirmation of life as far as Military Intelligence was concerned.

Sam and Hassan had been working alongside both American and British Military Intelligence, and both divisions had been eager to get their men back. Once Anderson's death had been discovered, the US soldiers were looking to bring justice to their fallen comrades, while the British were even more desperate to find their men alive. Both Rawson and Wallcroft belonged to UKSF, and, as such, had a greater amount of access to intelligence work than the average soldier, making their capture one with possible far-reaching consequences.

Both men could readily be identified as belonging to the Parachute Regiment by anyone who knew their military insignias well enough but there was nothing on their uniform or in their packs that would have identified them as belonging to Special Forces. However, the Paras were renowned world-wide and the fact that a battalion was permanently attached to the Special Forces Support Group was readily accessible.

Iraq was a war-torn country full of men and women who had survived war after war, and brutal regime after brutal regime. The chances of Rawson and Wallcroft being in the hands of a rebel faction without _any_ kind of basic military understanding were beyond unlikely.

They had narrowed down the search area, but Sam knew that the longer they were in the hands of the enemy, the shorter their odds were for survival. There was an awful lot of desert out there and aerial shots and satellite images could only go so far in helping to narrow down the grid search and find the missing soldiers.

Five weeks was a long time for any soldier to be missing, and five weeks in the hands of the enemy rarely saw a favourable outcome. Sam prayed every night, but sometimes his doubts were crippling. So far, his prayers had not being answered and he didn't think he could cope with losing yet another friend to the barren landscape, to those that hid amongst the rocks and dunes.

They never showed what it was _really_ like in the movies – life as a POW as depicted by Hollywood was one of constant defiance and plans of escape, of camaraderie and resourcefulness. There was never any indication that a large amount of time as a POW was spent waiting alone in a cell, trying desperately not to count down the minutes to the next interrogation. There's the obligatory scene of solitary confinement, of course, but Mick couldn't recall any film depicting the lead huddled all alone in a dark, cramped cell, suffering through the effects of dysentery with nothing but shit and soil in his arsenal.

The explosive diarrhoea was bad enough, but the cramping pain in his stomach was so excruciating that any position but foetal was unbearable. That he didn't have the room to stretch out in his little cell _anyway_ did not make his situation any better.

Unfortunately, he had to lie down curled around a foul-smelling hole in the ground. The smell was intolerable and must have been _long_ before he arrived there. It was _not_ something he had grown accustomed to, despite the dark, small room being his home for just under five weeks.

They were being kept in a modified shower block. Their cells were old toilets, mere holes in the ground with a little room either side to plant the feet. He knew Danny was being held about three cells down. There was an American soldier being held opposite and a German aid worker, who the insurgents apparently suspected of espionage, at the other end.

There was a tiny hole for a window, high up and opposite the door, but it was far too small to squeeze out of and it was hard to find enough leverage to look out and see what was going on outside. Mick had tried a couple of times, but he was rarely in a fit state to succeed. So far all he'd seen were walls, so the shower block was likely near the edge of a compound or a walled village.

There were no lights inside the cell, and once darkness fell it was impossible to see. Movement was typically limited at night to avoid falling into the cesspit below. A few careful stretches to iron out stiffening joints was all Mick could afford.

On a good day, they'd be allowed to the other end of the shower block to wash, as well as gain access to potable water. There they could give their clothes a rinse and try to wring out the acrid smell of vomit and faeces.

Mick had not been given any more clothes, and his uniform was more than a little ragged after his sessions with Fahim. However, he'd take the rips and the dried blood over the smell from his cell any day of the week! The little trips to the showers never managed to completely remove the odour of his cell, but it at least made _some_ improvement. It was a small victory, but one Mick held onto nonetheless.

They were forced to strip down to nothing, something the insurgents clearly thought would make them uncomfortable. It was true that not one of them enjoyed the idea of being so open and vulnerable to their captors, but in reality their clothing offered little extra protection if a beating occurred. As military men who had shared training and barracks and who had spent the past few months in the desert in close quarters with thousands of other servicemen, nudity around others was commonplace and long since stopped being an embarrassment, and merely an expected necessity.

There were plenty of jeers and crude comments from their watching guards, and Mick, with his near fluent Arabic, could understand _all_ their insinuations. He never replied, though. None of them did. They knew they had limited time in the shower and the luxury of both being clean, and _feeling_ it, was too good to pass up for a retort that would likely see an ensuing beating!

Mick still hadn't let on that he knew much beyond the basics of the Arabic language, determined to lull the insurgents into revealing something while talking to each other in front of their prisoner.

While the prisoners were in the shower, the guards _did_ mumble to each other, often as they smoked, but most of the time the things they talked about were not all that revealing. One of their regular guards was looking after his sister, widowed by a Predator Drone strike, and was expecting her first child. His concerns were the same as everyone else's would be in a similar situation; the only difference was that he had helpless targets facing the full extent of his anger.

Other guards moaned about the lack of rations, something that affected the prisoners first and foremost. They would usually get rice and a little flat bread and if they were very lucky the got a little goat meat or chicken. They were only ever fed enough to keep them alive and strong enough to survive the next round of interrogations. Sometimes the guards would throw the bread into the cell, aiming for the revolting hole in the ground. Mick had thankfully not been desperate enough to eat the bread the two times that he had missed!

Of course, it was difficult to maintain clean hands cooped up in that little cell. When food finally _did_ find its way to him, he did everything he could to think about anything _other_ than what parasites he could be ingesting. Thankfully, the showers helped keep them somewhat cleaner than they would otherwise be, and with a little care and attention the worst of the soiling on his hands would be just that, soil.

The clothes, however, weren't as easy to keep clean but the guards seemed just as eager as they were to get a somewhat sweeter smelling uniform. Mick didn't much trouble himself with the thought that he might be offending their delicate sense of smell; for him, it was all about the practicalities. Cleaner clothes helped his morale, helped his wounds and helped his already somewhat battered sense of morale.

Of course, being forced to wear the clothes as they _dried_ was far from comfortable, and the chill of the desert air brought about many an uncomfortable night. Mick had already gained a slight cough to add to his ever-increasing number of ailments, but the risks of sitting in his soiled uniform with as many open wounds as Fahim seemed determined he should have ensured that the washing of uniforms was almost mandatory.

The visits to the showers provided one more benefit. Apparently the guards didn't want to spend any more time than necessary watching over them in the showers, so all their prisoners were herded in together and that gave the captives a chance to make sure the others were ok.

They were rarely allowed to talk, and were brutally punished if the guards felt some transgression had been made. There were one or two guards that seemed less bothered by their talking quietly to one another, but even _their_ mercy was not a sure-fire thing. However, the fact that _sometimes_ the prisoners were allowed to get away with talking usually meant that they would take the risk if it was necessary.

The German was usually quiet, even on the days they were allowed to converse. He seemed terrified by the whole affair, and understandably so. The others were all soldiers and had at least acquired _some_ basic training for such circumstances, no matter how ineffective such training was in the face of reality. The German, Joseph Hauser, however, was an untrained civilian in a situation far above his experience and expectations.

Joseph had been captured with another aid worker who had since disappeared. He had been providing aid to the local populace in a town called Mirsana, which had suffered through several attacks, one of which saw the bombing of a Shia mosque that had left twelve dead. Joseph had been herded into a truck and taken to two other locations before ending up in a foul-smelling cell in the middle of nowhere.

The American soldier was Army, and Private First Class Benjamin Steele was a mere eighteen years old. His low rank and young age managed to do him some good though. He was still beaten for being an American and for being a soldier, but he was not being heavily interrogated, having been deemed too low on the totem pole to know anything of consequence.

Danny Wallcroft, Mick's spotter and good friend, did not have such an easy time of it and frequently showed up with new bruises littered across his body. He also did his best to shove his head under the showerhead only when it became necessary to scrub at the dirt there. It spoke to the waterboarding that was a frequent show in Mick's own interrogations – he, too, had become a little water-shy and hoped that time would prove a cure.

Danny had once appeared with a bad head-wound, the injury still raw and bleeding sluggishly. The insurgent who had dragged him into the shower-room seemed only too happy to leave him to Mick's tender care, sick of having to support the barely responsive man’s weight. Danny had been near insensible and Mick had had to wash him under the weak spray of the showers, drawing jeers and crude comments from his captors. Mick couldn't have cared less. He knew that Danny would feel embarrassed about it later, but he also knew that being clean was a luxury and one they could _not_ afford to miss out on.

Mick knew _that_ from personal experience. His shoulder wound had become infected, unsurprising given the state of his locale. He had suffered through several days of delirium and vomiting and all-around crappiness before Fahim, who was worried about losing one of his favourite prisoners, brought in a local doctor to attend the wound.

The doctor had been all business and not at all sympathetic. There was not a lot Mick could recall from those few feverous days, but the absolute agony of the debridement as the doctor cut away at the infected tissue and irrigated the wound, the strong aroma of antiseptic followed by the sickening smell of burning flesh as he sealed the wound were some very clear experiences that had cut through the delirium.

He had lost a lot of strength and that had left him vulnerable. He was already dangerously dehydrated and malnourished due to the previously infected wound and all of its effects, and that had only left him in _more_ danger – he'd come down with dysentery about six days ago.

Of course, his deteriorating state had not stopped Fahim.

Right from the get-go, Fahim had decided that Mick was the one to focus on. He'd discovered about four days into his interrogations that the slight gesture that had passed between Mick and Danny back in the courtyard of that first holding place had been seen by Fahim, and taken as an indication of command structure. That Mick had simply been looking out for the welfare of his friend had apparently not even occurred to the cruel man.

Beatings were expected and waterboarding commonplace in Mick's interrogations. But Fahim did not stop there.

Mick had endured many arduous and painful hours of assuming the latest stress position that Fahim thought up as question after question was directed his way. Hours, sometimes even days, of adopting the same position that relied on just a few muscles left him in agony and feeling more than just a little light-headed, as what little energy he'd absorbed from his ridiculously small helping of food was quickly burned away.

Sometimes, when he felt his body waver, he would try and change his position, but there was always a willing guard ready to beat him back into place. When he could stand it no more and helplessly collapsed onto the floor, he'd be ruthlessly beaten and dragged back to his cell, barely able to lift himself out of the foul mess they always sought to dump him in on his return.

There were also the pressure hangings he was forced to endure. His arms would be tied, sometimes behind his back, and then they would be lifted above his head, attached to the ceiling or high on the wall so that his feet were either just scraping the floor, or dangling just above it, unable to take any of the pressure off his shoulders. The aftereffects of _that_ particular treatment lasted a long time, and while he had not _yet_ dislocated a shoulder, the muscles in his arms and shoulders were so overtaxed that he could barely lift them until a few days _'treatment free'_ had passed.

Mick had also frequently suffered through falaqa, and walking between his cell to the showers or to Fahim's interrogation room had become increasingly painful. The skin was tender but it had not yet broken on either foot, and Mick was terrified of it happening. With an open wound on his foot, infection was sure to follow, given that he was barefoot and caged in filth. And with a serious injury to his foot, escape would be nigh on impossible.

Yes, he still dreamed of escape. He was not entirely sure of the actual day, having lost a few to delirium, but he knew the daily routine perfectly. Fahim was strict about his own routine, from the way he dressed to the time he ate to the things he said; even his _violence_ was consigned to the predictable!

First it was a warm welcome, almost as if he were greeting an old friend, then the beatings would start in earnest before he offered a chance for it all to stop in exchange for some useful information. Then the torture became all about the psychological aspect, waterboarding run side-by-side a long-winded diatribe about how he had been forgotten by his country, how he had been left to die by the very men and women he was trying so desperately to protect.

The few pieces of information that Mick had parted with were relatively small and hopefully redundant. He knew from his training that everybody broke and that it was only a matter of time – to survive you _had_ to part with information and if you were caught in a lie by your captors then it could prove fatal for more than one prisoner in their care.

Mick had held on for quite a few days before finally giving them a patrol route. He knew it was one of the first things the Brass would have changed and so it should not lead to any harm. Fahim’s arrogance, his staunch belief that he was able to get their prisoner to talk had probably been one of the reasons he had brought a doctor to the compound and saved Mick’s life, so assured was he that he could get more, if only his prisoner were well enough to respond.

Of course, there were things Fahim asked that Mick could not answer, one or two pieces because they could have severe consequences but mostly because he didn’t know. It was probably after the twentieth _'I'm sorry but I cannot answer that question'_ that Fahim started to turn to his favourite alternatives in interrogation aides.

Mick had had a lot of time to study Fahim. In fact, he often used the man as a focal point, something to concentrate on that did not dwell on his various aches and pains. It was clear from their first meeting that the man had a sadistic streak to him. The way he had left Anderson to die was a sure-fire way of confirming _that_ particular little trait. The rebel leader's subsequent actions had only gone on to strengthen Mick's initial opinion: Fahim got off on the pain and suffering of others, to a terrifying degree.

The man held an air of civility around him and it was clear he had been well-educated, probably even in the UK or the US, given his grasp of the language. However, once the honeyed words stopped and the actions took over, all appearances of civility quickly disappeared.

Despite being the leader, he was more than happy for the other men to have their own go at leading the interrogation, so long as the damage done to their prisoner was not irreparable. Some might see it as a leader merely giving his men a chance to expand, but Mick had seen the look in Fahim's eyes and knew it was simply because the man wanted to sit back and enjoy the show while he thought up the next instalment, and Mick wasn't sure how much more he could endure any of it.

* * *

** Al Jazeera ** **_– a network based in Qatar that was originally set up as a news and current affairs TV channel focusing particularly on the Arabic world, but it has since expanded._ **

** Dysentery ** **_– a form of gastroenteritis that can be very serious. Common symptoms are diarrhoea and severe abdominal pains. It is usually caused by ingesting contaminated food or water. Dehydration and malnutrition are the biggest concerns, along with the very grave risk of the parasite invading the bloodstream and travelling to other vital organs._ **

** Predator Drone ** **_– it is an_ ** ** Unmanned Aerial Vehicle ** **_(or a_ ** ** UAV ** **_) that cost several million pounds each. They are largely used for reconnaissance but many have been modified to carry missiles. There is a lot of controversy surrounding the use of drones, as the classified nature of their operations and the lack of a solid set of governing rules in regards to their usage has led to many civilian targets and no one to be held accountable._ **

** Falaqa ** **_– a Persian word for a form of corporal punishment that sees the soles of the feet being beaten, often with an object._ ** ** Falaqa ** **_refers to a piece of wood that is used to secure the feet before the feet are beaten._ **


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ****  
> _There is more torture in this chapter, so again please be careful if this subject matter affects you._  
> 

Hassan saw his partner standing amidst the ruins of the devastated hamlet, a look of utter desolation on his face. "Are you ok?" he asked quietly, immediately cursing the stupidity of the question when the answer was obvious but nothing else came to mind.

"Ok? No, of _course_ I'm not ok. Look around, Hassan. Everyone is dead: men, women and children. There is a kid back there that has been shredded by an M203 round and she can't have been more than five! And there is not one scrap of evidence to suggest that _anyone_ in this place was armed."

"Come on, Sam; intel said that spotters were at this location and we _can't_ ignore that kind of intel," the younger man offered in an attempt to appease his overwrought friend. In truth, he was feeling more than a little distraught himself at the grisly scene surrounding him. "They were giving the insurgents our position and making the mortar fire accurate enough to kill two of our soldiers. We _had_ to do _something_!"

"You've been here long enough to know that is exactly how the enemy operates! They hide behind civilians. They do what they need to do and then they run before we've even pinpointed their location."

"This time we already had the intelligence and anyway, the RoE's said…"

"I _know_ what the damn RoE's said! They said that _everyone_ in this area had been declared _'hostile'_ and that gave some damn trigger-happy Marine Reservists the green-light to fire off as many goddamn rounds as they wanted without fear of repercussion! There are men from six different units here, and five of them had enough discipline and common-sense to refrain from laying waste to an entire community of goat-herders. There are eleven dead _civilians_ , Hassan, not _one_ of them is a confirmed combatant, so screw the goddamn RoE's!"

"Sam, this is not your fault…" Hassan began hesitantly, all too aware that his partner's guilt was at the heart of the issue.

" _I'm_ the one that interrogated Al Tariq. _I'm_ the one that gave them the intel we got from him. _I'm_ the one who gave them confirmation that this hamlet had enemy combatants.. How the hell is their blood _not_ on my hands?" he asked brokenly, gesturing towards the dead.

"Everyone in this game knows that intelligence is only _truly_ solid immediately after the fact. Enemy combatants _were_ here, they _were_ acting as spotters for that mortar fire and they _were_ hiding behind civilians because they knew we wouldn't fire on them and…"

"Clearly!" Sam interrupted bitterly as he looked at the carnage surrounding them.

" _And_ what the higher-ups do with the intel we supply them with is not up to us, and you should know that by now," Hassan continued, ignoring the interruption. "We sure as hell don't have any kind of control over the _soldiers_ – they see us as POGs, at best! Now, the Marine-Reservists who opened fire might have the RoE's on their side, but _not_ their commander – they were ordered to hold fire and some of them directly contravened that order and they _will_ pay for it."

"Do you really think a charge of insubordination is enough to make up for this?" Sam asked, disbelievingly.

"Of course not!" Hassan angrily replied. "But Lieutenant Colonel Dekkerd is a good man and a hell of a Marine and he'll make sure those Reservists responsible face the full-force of a court-martial. Given the consequences of their insubordination, a Dishonourable Discharge is entirely possible and if they're forced to leave the Military because of this then I'm going to count it as a win in the long-run so that this kind of shit doesn’t happen again in the future, and _that_ is the best we're likely to get in this situation."

"The best?" Sam scoffed. "I don't see how anything _good_ can come out of this!"

"There _isn't_ anything beyond getting those responsible removed from active duty. This was a horrible, _horrible_ tragedy and sadly I doubt anyone will serve time over this, but maybe, just maybe lessons will be learnt and it won't happen again."

"I'm sure they thought the same thing after My Lai," the older man pointed out sardonically.

"Just so you know, you weren't responsible for _that,_ either," Hassan offered with a wry grin.

"Thanks for letting me know," Sam's barking laugh was a genuine one, no matter how broken. He _was_ grateful for his younger partner. It was all too easy to get caught up in the tragedies of war, _especially_ the avoidable ones, and a good friend who was just as likely to beat some common-sense back into you as he was to comfort you was a real lifeline on the days when things went wrong and doubts and self-recriminations crept to the forefront.

Thankfully, the sort of breakdown in military discipline that led to their current situation was a rare occurrence. There had been other incidences, of course: friendly-fire from a terrified young soldier, someone mistaking a camel herding stick for a rifle barrel, a scared child running out into the streets during a firefight, a deeply traumatised soldier seeing enemies everywhere and reacting without prejudice to friend and foe alike.

The worst part of it was that some of the Reservists thought they were meting out _'justice'_. News of what had happened to Sergeant Anderson had spread like wildfire through all three branches of the military and beyond just the US troops involved in the recovery of the body. Stories of the torture room had been grossly exaggerated, so much so that there were now tales circulating about an executioner's block.

What had happened to Anderson had been horrific, far too horrific for the full details to be released to the press. However, his suffering had been caused by a select few, not one of whom had been in the hamlet to receive the so-called justice the Reservists were so eager to dish out.

Sam had seen the same thing happen in law enforcement. Whenever a cop was mown down, the whole police force took it personally and each and every officer saw it as their own private mission to hunt down those responsible. There were always some that were prepared to take it that one step further, some that wanted to take the justice system into their own hands and act as judge, jury and executioner.

It had always struck Sam as the absolute worst thing they could do. The police, the military, they were held to a higher standard, and rightfully so. They were the men and women tasked with protecting their country, its people and all it stood for and in the US, that was supposed to be _'one nation, indivisible, with liberty and justice for_ all'. Yet, men and women whose very job it was to enforce that system frequently took the law, or their interpretation of it, into their own hands, undermining the very system they were working to uphold.

Sam had always believed in the justice system, imperfect though it may be. The idea that everyone had the same rights, regardless of race, gender, religion or sexuality, was part of what had drawn him to law enforcement in the first place. It was a system to believe in, one worth fighting for and worth defending. They were supposed to be _'liberating'_ Afghanistan and Iraq, espousing the benefits of a country with a strong sense of law and order at its core, only for a few vigilante Marine Reservists to belie the idea of an attainable justice system in a matter of minutes.

How were they ever going to win that particular battle if their own men and women kept betraying the system they were supposed to be supporting? Every incident like the devastated hamlet that surrounded him, like Abu Ghraib, left an indelible mark that took them further and further away from the local population's belief in a better tomorrow brought about by Allied involvement.

He could not see either Afghanistan or Iraq ending well. He could see no positive outcome. The positive lessons that many had sought to teach about the joys of democracy and law and order had been lost, and re-establishing the faith of the local population would take time if, indeed, it ever _could_ return.

"Come on, Sam, stop brooding," Hassan interrupted his morose thoughts. "We've got a lot more work to do. Just try to remember, those Reservists? _They_ fucked up, Sam, not _you_ , so stop trying to join them in their punishment, ok?"

"I'll try to keep that in mind," Sam promised.

* * *

Mick knew that something was different straight away. He had awoken to the sound of an engine in the early hours and the noise outside had not died down since. There were a few footsteps outside his cell, but on the whole it appeared as though the prisoners were being ignored for the time being and he had not yet suffered through his usual morning session. The Welshman was perfectly fine with that.

Yesterday had seen another pressure hanging and he was struggling to lift his arms above his head in an effort to stretch out the aches and pains that had seemed to find their home throughout the various neural pathways winding their way across his body. Pain was something he had come to expect, but that expectation did not lessen the sensation and with exhaustion coming into play, too, he had never felt so weak and vulnerable.

He'd managed to push himself into a somewhat seated position when he heard someone approach his cell and heard the bolt being slid out of position.

Mick had expected to see a guard, someone to drag him to Fahim on his feet no matter how incapable he was of walking. He had not expected to see the interrogator himself. Fahim looked furious and apparently all that fury was directed at the Para in front of him. Mick wasn't quite sure what he could have done to upset the man so much but he didn't much relish the idea of finding out.

"You have not been honest with me, Michael," Fahim started without preamble. When he was first interrogated, he had introduced himself as 'Mick', fully understanding that it fell within the parameters of the Big Four and gave nothing away that Fahim could not discover for himself. Once Fahim had seen his full name, Michael Rawson, on his dog tags, the interrogator had taken to calling him that instead. Mick wasn't quite sure why.

It was Hostage Negotiation 101 to try and build a rapport with your captor, but Fahim was a sociopath if ever there was one and Mick couldn't see the man being unable to perform his duties because of the familiar use of a nickname.

He suspected it was more about control. He had introduced himself as Mick but Fahim had chosen to go by Michael for the very simple reason that it was one more way in which the interrogator could show the prisoner just who was really in charge, about just how much he was in control of _every_ aspect of Mick's current circumstances.

"What can I possibly have lied about?" He had learnt early on that Fahim liked getting straight to the point, and even if Mick could not or _would_ not answer a question, it was always better (and less painful) to say so than to play the hero and keep to a stoic silence.

This time Fahim was not at all impressed with his candour.

"Bring him," he said tersely in Arabic to one of the guards.

Mick didn't have the strength to fight back, and the cell, as small as it was, allowed for limited manoeuvrability so he couldn't even try to move out of their rough hold. He could tell that Fahim was in a particularly foul mood and Mick did not want to experience the results of that – a calm and collected interrogator was bad enough!

Danny had obviously heard his predicament and started shouting, alternating between insults to the guards and words of support for his fellow Para. Throughout their ordeal, Wallcroft had kept a calm head pretty well, and Mick could only attribute his intense agitation to the fact that the spotter had also noticed the frenetic energy outside that was only picking up momentum.

He shouted back to Danny, trying to get the man to cease his verbal attack and save his friend from a beating of his own, all too aware that Mick would probably have to take the beating in his stead if he was at all successful.

"Rest easy, Corporal!" he ordered, getting a punch to his bruised ribs even as he was dragged out of the shower block.

The interrogation room was small and dark and Fahim stood menacingly in the shadows. There was a tall support beam running from the floor to ceiling in the centre that Mick had spent many an hour tied to, and there was a long, narrow bench along the back wall where the waterboarding occurred. Mick could already see the water buckets on standby.

At first he thought that he would be facing more of the same treatment, right up until he caught sight of the car battery. He had suffered through all sorts of torture thought up by twisted men throughout the ages and acted out with great relish by Fahim, but he had not been subjected to electrocution.

Clearly whatever had caused Fahim and his men to step up activity in the compound had brought about a desperation that did not bode well for the men in their custody.

"Your soldiers have changed their patrol routes," Fahim informed him.

While Mick was happy to hear friendly troops were likely closer to their location if the surrounding panic was anything to go by, he could not delude himself into thinking that rescue was only a short day away.

"Patrol routes are always changing, any soldier worth his salt knows that," Mick replied, aware that he was not disclosing any potentially damaging information. "You can't really be holding me accountable for standard military procedure? You've been in the military," he did not need Fahim to confirm that to know it was true. "You follow the same path each and every time and you're asking for an ambush."

"Like you did?" Fahim asked, smugly.

"There were only so many paths back to base through that town, as you well know, which is why you set up the roadblock," Mick pointed out. The ambush had been one of the more successful attempts set up by the local insurgents, but as most of the Allied soldiers had escaped alive and well, Mick was not counting it as quite the rebel victory that Fahim seemed intent on claiming.

"We will be moving today," Fahim stated. "You will not be going home just yet, Michael."

"And here I was hoping to get home in time for Christmas," Mick muttered snidely. He usually played the part of the _'grey man'_ , unobtrusive while being neither of help nor hindrance to his captors. But he was tired and in pain and beyond pissed at being singled out each and every time, even knowing that he would never allow for any of the other three prisoners to take his place.

Fahim seemed determined to get his pound of flesh and he was equally determined that it should be taken out of Mick’s hide. The sociopathic jailer enjoyed his time in interrogation just a little too much and Mick was sick and tired of being an unwilling participant in the man's twisted fantasies.

Fahim's eyes narrowed at his captive's glibness. The soldier did not know when to cooperate and Fahim was bored of trying to teach him.

"Tie him to the table," an order in Arabic made Mick briefly close his eyes as he tried to steel himself for what was to come.

The _'table'_ was, in reality a long, narrow bench that Mick had spent a great deal of his last five weeks tied to, and each and every session was something he hoped senility would one day wipe from his mind.

There was no point struggling. He was still weak from the tortures of the previous day and there were four guards in the room beside Fahim. While he could feel the adrenaline pumping through his system, there was no possible payoff for trying to fight against them - each and every defiance had to be carefully thought through, lest the results hinder any future attempts.

As he was forced down on the narrow, wooden bench he could feel the muscles in his back protesting at the unwelcome pressure. Before he could draw a deep breath to ready himself, a heavy cloth was draped unceremoniously across his face and the water started to flow.

The pressure on his face was the first thing he felt, from both the water itself and the increasing weight of the cloth as the liquid soaked through the material. Then came the struggling. He fought and fought with every last ounce of strength he possessed but he could not move the bonds or the heavy Iraqi pushing down on his chest or the other guard who was holding his head in place as Fahim continued to slowly empty the first bucket over his face.

He fought with himself to have sense overcome instinct, tried to still himself, tried to stop himself from panicking and wasting what little breath he had left in him. He needed to reserve every last bit of oxygen left in his lungs so he could try and draw a lungful when the bucket finally emptied. It was easier to breathe out than to breathe in when the water was at full force and he had always attempted to exhale a little at a time in an effort to preserve his oxygen.

Finally, the pressure eased up and Fahim stripped the sodden cloth from his face, a satisfied gleam twinkling in the depths of his dark eyes.

"Why would the patrols from your base have altered their course so much as to explore thirty miles away from their usual area of operations?"

"How am I supposed to know the answer to that," Mick asked in between heavy breaths as he tried to even out his ragged breathing. "You've had us for five weeks, Fahim. Any information we had when you first grabbed us will be useless now. They'll have taken steps to ensure that anything we might know can't compromise anyone else. They've had _five_ weeks, Fahim."

"So why not just tell me what I want to know? Who is the informant in Mirsana? Which supply road to your base do the ammunition trucks use and how well protected are they? Have the CIA or British Intelligence got any agents inside AQI?"

"What makes you think I know the answer to any of those things?"

"Do you really want to tell me that you are useless to me? That there is no point in keeping you alive?" Fahim asked, a smirk creeping across his face, all too aware that Mick had no way out: if he said he _was_ useless then he was a dead man, if he said he was _not_ then the questions and the torture would continue.

Mick closed his eyes to try and unsuccessfully hide the dismay that he knew would leak through every muscle in his face.

"That is what I thought," Fahim replied with no small degree of satisfaction.

Without warning the wet cloth was slapped back across his face and the bucket was already half empty before he could register what had happened. The cloth had reached full saturation and was beginning to leak, water pouring through onto his face through the material, into his mouth, up his nose, choking him as he fought to move his head to the side and cough it up.

Every second felt like an hour as he coughed up water only to have more poured down his throat as it seeped through and around the cloth draped over his face. There was little pause between the end of the second bucket and the start of the third, and he was so breathless and his lungs were burning so fiercely and his head pulsating with such fury that he barely registered the moment the pressure eased.

The second his head was released he turned onto his side, as much as the straps and the guards enabled him to, and coughed and coughed until his throat was raw and his airway cleared of water.

Once he was able to draw in a somewhat steady breath, he realised that a conversation in Arabic was going on by the doorway. The material was so wet it was still mostly stuck to his face and he couldn't see what was happening, but he recognised the voice.

"Shall I get the convoy ready, sir?" asked a young man that had been involved in the ambush. Mick had always felt incredibly pissed off when he was tied and beaten by a man who was barely old enough to drive – it didn't do much for the ego!

"Yes. I want the prisoners in the truck once night has fallen. One vehicle - we cannot risk more than that in case _they_ are watching! I will go with them. I want Anas and Rehan in the back with the prisoners, and you will drive!" Fahim commanded in a voice that brooked no debate.

"The rest of the men can leave over the next few hours. Tell them to be at the Al Halaba compound in no more than two days," he firmly ordered. "Different routes are to be taken. We want to avoid attention."

Mick was concentrating too much on his breathing to think too much on what he was overhearing, but he knew that once he got back to his cell he would have to examine it all and come up with a plan if possible.

The young guard left to carry out Fahim's orders and the torture started up once again, fresh buckets of water standing by. Once the sadistic interrogator grew bored of waterboarding, he turned to an old favourite – falaqa.

With every whip of the cane against the soles of his feet, Mick sought desperately to swallow his cries. After all the other indignities he had suffered he would not give Fahim the satisfaction of seeing him in pain, especially since that only served to excite the man even further. It was a bold plan, but also a stupid one.

Mick was beyond tired, he was exhausted right through to his very bones. He was _already_ in constant pain. There was the dull ache that seeped through every muscle and flared with every movement. There was the constant headache from dehydration and the hunger pains brought about by a minimal diet. His lungs burned with every breath, still fighting to restore the correct oxygen levels to his battered body. His wrists and ankles were chaffed and red raw from the constant use of restraints. The palms of his hands were left with crescent-shaped wounds as he often clenched his fists while trying to stave off the screams.

His plan to hide his pain was more to do with his ego than anything else, but it was a battle he needed to win, no matter how doomed it was from the start. He was already suffering, and sometimes his reluctance to cry out in his pain undoubtedly led to a more forceful blow or another hour of torture, but if he could not win in a physical fight against his captors, all he had left was the mental side of it all.

He managed to keep his distress limited to muffled groans and it gave him enormous satisfaction to see Fahim's mounting frustration at his lack of response. It was a small victory, but one he desperately needed. He felt like hell and his morale had long since sunk to the depths of the cesspit in his cell, but he felt his spirits lift a little every time irritation and frustration broke through Fahim's stoic façade.

The victory, however, was short lived.

They tied him to the beam in the centre of the room and one of the guards fiddled with the car battery. Mick felt his fear rising. An inexperienced interrogator could just as easily kill their victim as torture them, and while Fahim was anything but inexperienced, the man's increasing frustration had led to a much more brutal and prolonged session than was normal.

Any forms of torture that took time, such as the pressure hangings, had been ignored in favour of methods that had more immediate results, and Fahim's usual calm façade had ebbed away in the face of his increasing desperation.

Mick had never been electrocuted before, and while he knew the old car battery's output was being controlled, limited from its full potential, the shocks were still more than he could bear. With each jolt of electricity, his whole body went so rigid, the muscles were aching as they locked into place, his fingers and toes curled in on themselves.

He could not smother the screams no matter how hard he tried, even as his jaw was frozen in place and his lungs felt as though they had no room to expand while an agonised cry was wrenched from him.

Once the dial was turned back down, Mick could still feel the spasms wrack the length of his body and had to concentrate very hard in an effort to unclench his fingers and toes. His whole body shivered in the aftermath and the metallic taste in his mouth from both his fillings and from accidentally biting his tongue had him feeling nauseous.

His mind was wandering, fading in and out and unable to focus on any one thing. Sleep seemed like the best option, but with the feel of electricity still running through his body and the violent tremors that wracked his slim frame, it was an impossibility. He felt someone slap him on his right cheek but he could not focus on the face in front of him.

"Take him back to his cell," he heard the muffled Arabic order that felt like a distant echo and a shout directly in his ear all at once. "He is useless to me for now. We leave as soon as it is dark. We have about four hours."

' _Four hours'_ made its way through the fog clouding Mick's mind. He had four hours until they were being moved, deeper into territory that was not controlled by Allied forces and further away from a possible rescue.

Mick knew the statistics. He'd heard the horror stories from past POWs, and knew the one crucial fact to the situation - the longer they have you, the harder it is to escape. He could _not_ let Fahim take them to a new location, to a fresh hell.

He remembered snippets of the hushed conversation in Arabic – one vehicle with two guards in the back with the prisoners, a driver and Fahim. In transit was likely their best shot at a chance to escape, especially with only a single vehicle in play.

He knew that no matter what, he could count on Danny. Mick was injured and Danny was a lot weaker than he was five weeks ago thanks to injury and near starvation, but they were both well trained and they had both reached their limits in desperation.

PFC Benjamin Steele was the healthiest of them but he was also only a PFC and had passed out only a few short weeks before being shipped to Iraq and falling into enemy hands only seven weeks later. He was young and relatively untried and Mick wasn't sure how much he could rely upon the FNG when the shit hit the fan.

The aid worker, Joseph Hauser, was an untrained civilian and a potential liability if he couldn't keep his head. He had also, as a suspected spy, become more than a little battered and bruised over the course of his captivity. However, Mick had no intention of leaving the man behind and they would likely need another (relatively) healthy body to help get the injured over the rough terrain and back to the safety of Allied-controlled territory.

With only two guards in the back and another two hostiles in the front of the vehicle, this was likely their best shot at survival. They could not afford to go further into enemy territory and simply await their end once Fahim had decided he'd had enough fun at their expense and that their intel was no longer worth the effort.

It was a huge risk to take, but they were out of options and out of time. No matter the dangers, they _had_ to try and escape.

* * *

** M203 ** **_– is a 40mm grenade launcher that is usually attached to the underside of a rifle, and is for soft targets - breaching doorways/windows, unarmoured vehicles and areas of high enemy-combatant density._ **

** RoE's ** **_– the_ ** ** Rules of Engagement ** **_– rules that are given to the military and dictate what measures are acceptable in any given situation. They are a relatively fluid concept that can be changed to adapt to most circumstances. They can also change in the blink of an eye - from only being allowed to fire at enemy soldiers firing at you, to everyone being declared_ ** **'hostile' _and therefore a target._**

** POGs ** **_– US military slang for_ ** **'Personnel Other than Grunts' _or_ 'Posted on the Garrisons' _and is basically a derogatory term for anyone not on the front-line, typically serving in a support role for the military, e.g.- logistics, intelligence…_ POGs _tend to be looked down upon by regular infantry._**

** Lieutenant Colonel ** **_– (abbreviated as_ LtCol _in the USMC) is a rank just above Major and below Colonel._**

** Court Martial ** **_– it is a military court with the ability to try and punish members of the armed forces suspected of breaching military law and discipline. In the US, there are three kinds: Special, Summary and General._ **

** My Lai ** **_(known as_ ** ** Son My ** **_in Vietnam) was the scene of one of the bloodiest massacres in Vietnam by US Army soldiers. Men, women and children were killed, aged one to eighty-two, with estimates ranging from 350 up to 500 dead civilians. Evidence of rape and mutilation was found on several of the bodies. Despite this, only twenty-six soldiers were charged and only one was convicted – 2nd Lt. Calley (a platoon commander) was given a life sentence for murdering twenty-two civilians but only served a three and a half year sentence under house-arrest. It is very controversial less for what actually happened and the lack of justice, and more so for the attempted government-wide cover-up. There were heroes who did what they could to end the massacre but their actions tend to get lost in the absolute horror of the atrocities committed by a select few soldiers._ **

** Passed Out ** **_– military slang for the final parade at the end of military training that sees a cadet become a soldier._ ** ** Passing Out ** **_is essentially graduation from training and the move into the Armed Forces._ **

** FNG ** **_–_ ** ** Fucking New Guy ** **_, sometimes derogatory, sometimes friendly banter, sometimes just a name to show their position._ **


	7. Chapter 7

Mick couldn't believe that four hours had passed. He'd managed a somewhat disturbed couple of hours sleep, waking to find that his breathing still felt laboured and his heartbeat irregular. His limbs were a contradiction, still tense and leaden, yet unwieldy and shaking tremulously. His head was throbbing and he was so exhausted his eyes felt as though they were coated with acid, burning under his eyelids as he tried to focus.

The guard that came to his cell, Anas, was almost as old as Fahim and certainly the most senior of the guards. He was grizzled in appearance, his clothes worn but carefully stitched and repaired. The man had always been firm but fair with his prisoners – never too rough but swift and exacting enough in his retribution should any of them try to get one over on him. Anas rarely spoke, and Mick had often found himself longing for Anas after a trying day, unable to deal with the more volatile and verbose guards.

He was unable to get to his own feet, and Anas hefted him up by pulling hard on the loose material at his shoulders. The only thing keeping him upright was that firm grip as the forward momentum became more than he could handle. He hoped his inability to move and focus was due to his short, and anything but sweet nap, as the chances of a successful escape would be greatly diminished if he could not gather his wits about him.

Due to the busy activity in the rest of the compound, while the rest of the men set out for the rendezvous point, the shower block had been left unguarded as the insurgents were confident that their weakened prisoners could not escape their cells. Mick had not heard anyone patrolling the hallways and after a tentative conversation at a hushed level saw no violent consequences or jeering words, Mick had quickly and quietly told the others what he had overheard, and that it was likely their only chance at escape.

The three soldiers talked over their options while the aid worker listened on in increasing terror. They had no idea where they were, or even which direction they should head in to meet with allied troops. They _did_ know that allied patrols had been coming increasingly closer to the compound, and running into one of those patrols would be a dream come true.

They were unarmed and while, with four soldiers travelling with them, they were not outmanned, they _were_ hopelessly beaten in strength. Each and every one of them carried the evidence of their detention. Mick was undoubtedly in the worst shape of them all, his injuries as well as his illness had left him greatly weakened and he worried about not being able to do what was necessary.

They couldn't be sure what kind of truck they would be travelling in so they made plans for various different makes and models, but when it came down to it, a lot would be down to improvisation given that no one could be certain of what was to come.

It had been decided that Danny and the US soldier, Steele, would take care of the two guards riding in the back of the truck with them, while the German stood by ready to offer support should either man need it. Mick was to take the weapons from them and cover the entrance into the back of the vehicle, should the men up front hear the commotion and stop the vehicle.

Once armed, things would be much easier. They may be weak and injured, but their training was so ingrained and of such a calibre that shooting would not take much effort. It would certainly be more manageable than hand-to-hand combat in their current state!

The German aid worker, Joseph Hauser, had kept quiet throughout most of their discussion, understandably terrified of the potential fallout of such an action. However, given the fact that he was suspected of espionage, he understood all too well that going further into enemy territory could only spell bad news, especially for him. With a quiet and tremulous voice, he had agreed to follow the demands of the soldiers.

The American, Benjamin Steele, knew that he would be relied upon as the healthiest of them to act as a crutch for the injured should any injuries prove too much to move out of the line of fire. Hopefully they would get their hands on the vehicle, but if that was not possible then they would need to move on foot and get as far away from any potential enemy patrols as they could manage.

He was eager to get home, the reality of war nothing even _close_ to what he had imagined, and if the risky escape plan was his only shot then he would take it. He agreed to the rough plan and would look to Rawson for the go-ahead – given the man's understanding of the language and the fact that his injuries would force him to take a backseat, he was the natural choice for leader.

Danny was all for the escape. Like Mick, he had been told by lecturing former POWs during his training that time was always the worst enemy, and that the longer they had you the harder it was to get away. More time meant more injuries, greater weakness, increased exhaustion and much more difficulty in escaping. None of the four men were in great condition and he was particularly worried about Mick.

The two had gone through basic together, they had passed out together, they had joined the Paras and seen action in the Middle-East, Northern Ireland, West Africa and so many more places besides. They had buried friends together, trained FNGs together and covered each other's backs throughout the various trials and tribulations brought about by both enemy soldiers and hard-nosed, bureaucratic military officials who wouldn't know the realities of war even if they were stood in the middle of downtown Baghdad.

To see the Welshman look so vulnerable, to see such despondency in place of his usual shit-eating grin was like a kick to the stomach every time he saw him. Danny frequently felt guilty that Mick was enduring the worst of the torture, aware that it had been him looking to a friend at a time of need that had singled the sniper out from the start. Fahim had misread the gesture, taking it to be one of a subordinate looking to his OC, and no amount of protestation on his part could rectify the interrogator's mistaken belief.

He knew Mick had already lived through hell, knew that he was a tough son of a bitch, for all that he was a scrawny sod. Knew that even though he looked and probably felt like he was out for the count, the resilient Welshman could be relied upon to act with his usual calm and deliberant precision once the adrenaline started to kick in and the energy that brought forth allowed for action.

So, he agreed to the plan, but it had been at _his_ insistence that Mick have nothing to do with the initial attack. Ostensibly, it was under the guise that they would need his expert trigger finger ready to take care of the remaining two guards, but in reality, Danny just didn't want him near the physical fighting. He knew that Mick was weakened by his initial injury during the ambush and by the ensuing infection and illness, but he also knew that the torture had taken a very real toll on his body.

Mick was moving slower and always guarding his ribs. The frequent pressure hangings had clearly had a toll, too, but he had promised them that he could manage to fire a gun, and Danny trusted his judgement – their OCs had always been adamant that honesty about the true extent of an injury could save more than your own life and that dishonesty on such a matter could endanger the whole troop. The kick back on the gun may well _hurt_ Mick, but hopefully it wouldn't cause him any actual damage, and Danny trusted Mick to know exactly what he could handle.

After they had talked it all out, Mick had sat back against the wall in his cell. Everyone had agreed to the _very_ rough outline of their little escape attempt. It was fraught with dangers and complications, not least of which was that they were not even sure if they would be afforded the opportunity to take out the guards that would be riding with them, but they were fast running out of time and out of options. Improvisation had long been a stalwart part of military life and it seemed as though they would need to keep their wits about them if their attempt was to end in success.

A couple hours of sleep was all they had to gather their strength and their courage for what was to come. It wasn't nearly enough, but it was certainly better than spending their remaining time at the compound under Fahim's tender care.

With Anas dragging him through the shower block, Mick was grateful for what little sleep he had managed. He still felt one step below awful, but he was already finding the fog in his mind clearing and the heaviness in his limbs beginning to ease.

Dragged out into the cool night air, he was immediately blinded by the headlights on the truck. He was grateful that it was night as he wasn't sure he'd be able to cope with the glaring desert sun, given his reaction to sand-covered headlights.

The truck was a small one, with the cabin and the storage-hold joined together, a large rectangular window separating the two. The thick canvas sheeting around the storage-hold was sustained by several thick support beams and the ' _backdoor'_ was simply a canvas flap with several pieces of utility rope to secure it. The four tyres had a large tread and had been slightly deflated to get better traction on the sand. It was an old military style vehicle that looked as though it had seen a lot of miles and had likely been taken from the old Regime, but Mick knew from his own military experience that they were hardy, reliable vehicles.

The other three men were standing at the back of the vehicle, waiting to be loaded. Their hands had been tied before them, giving them some way to lever themselves on board. Whether this was because the guards were feeling particularly confident in keeping their prisoners under control or because they simply couldn't be bothered to lift them all into the truck, Mick couldn't say, but it was a stroke of good fortune that they had surely been missing the past five weeks.

With their hands in front of them, they would have greater manoeuvrability to execute their attack. However, Mick worried about the window. Once he pulled himself inside the truck, he sat nearest to it and noted that there was a sliding panel. If it was left open, the other two guards could easily hear any scuffling about, even over the noisy engine. It would also serve as an easy portal for Fahim to aim his sidearm through while the driver could carry on taking them further and further away from potential help.

He would have to act as the buffer between the window and the storage-hold. Fahim would likely have to level the gun _through_ the window in order to get the right trajectory, which allowed for the possibility of taking the gun from him while at the same time being afforded some protection with the metal frame that separated the rest of the cabin from the back of the truck acting as a shield.

He saw all eyes were on him, and he gave his fellow prisoners a brief nod to let them know that the plan was a go, desperately hoping that he had not just signed their death warrants.

* * *

They had been in the vehicle about fifteen minutes. The truck was old and the ground was rough and Mick knew that they were not travelling at great speed. Even so, he didn't know where or when they would be arriving at the rendezvous point and a quick glance around the vehicle showed that the others were getting more nervous, asking themselves the same question. Danny suddenly caught his eye and Mick took a deep breath before nodding – they were far enough away from the compound to risk it.

Danny and Steele were quick to react. Both men reached for the guns first, having used the bumpy ride to slowly edge closer towards their targets without raising suspicion. The two guards had been talking to each other, laughing over a shared joke when suddenly their captives turned on them. With their training taking over, both soldiers had disarmed their unsuspecting guards quickly, and then went to work on putting them down permanently, two bullets each. That was when the shouting from the front started.

Fahim turned to look through the small window, trying to understand what was happening. The young driver asked if he should stop but the interrogator ordered him to continue, eager as he was to reach the rendezvous on time and confident in his ability to suppress his captives. He pulled out his sidearm, slid open the window and took aim, his gun-hand barely through the opening as he tried to get the necessary trajectory to shoot his prisoners.

Mick remembered reaching for the gun, _his_ gun, the same gun that Fahim had taken from him five weeks ago and used to shoot Anderson. It had been constantly attached to the man's military belt since that day, an added torment for Mick to see his own gun, a weapon that had saved his life on several occasions, so close and yet so far.

There had been so many times throughout his five weeks of captivity that his fingers had itched to get a hold of the weapon, but the restraints, the armed guards or the sheer impracticality of trying to make a break for it when he could barely keep upright after his latest session with the sadistic interrogator had seemed like a ridiculously ill-thought-out plan.

His injuries had meant that he was moving slower than usual and with far less grace, but the adrenaline allowed him to be quick enough to intercept that first bullet. Unfortunately, the gun-hand hadn't been pointed far enough through the window for Mick to cleanly disable Fahim and while the first bullet did not lodge itself in Danny's head, as Fahim had been aiming for, it did catch Mick in the side, grazing his abdomen as he desperately tried to shield his friend.

The adrenaline pulsing through his system as it was meant that Mick barely registered it. His pain threshold had been greatly increased during his five weeks with Fahim, and finally all that pain came to something good. Ignoring the latest injury, Mick finally got a hold of the gun, only for Fahim to pull back. The Welshman refused to let go and ended up with the upper half of his body being roughly dragged through the small window and into the driver's cabin.

The driver panicked and started to try and hit out at Mick, only for the truck to veer dangerously to the side. Fahim shouted, loud and angry and panicked, and ordered the driver to focus on the road, told him that he had the situation in hand. The driver begged for the right to stop but his leader's orders were clear – they were to get to the rendezvous point as quickly as possible and there the prisoners would learn their lesson!

Fahim's hold on the gun was strong and Mick knew he couldn't outlast his captor – if he had been strong and healthy, perhaps, but not as weakened and injured as he was. He caught sight of a knife, sheathed in the back of the young driver's trousers and reached for it for his left hand, his right strenuously attempting to keep the gun off him and his fellow captives in the back of the truck.

His face concentrating solely on Fahim, he had to fumble about blindly in the direction he had seen the combat knife. His left hand clasped onto the handle as the gun came ever closer to him. Fahim once again went to press the trigger when the barrel was perilously close to Mick's head. A quick push with his right hand and the barrel was directed away as the shot rang out and Mick sunk the blade into Fahim's exposed neck.

He barely had time to release a breath of relief as the truck veered dangerously to the side of the rough track, before hitting a pothole and sending the vehicle careening off the road to the right. He felt someone grab at his legs trying to pull him out of his precarious position, balanced as he was between the cabin and the hold.

A quick look to the left showed the driver slumped over the steering wheel and the horizon disappearing from his side-window as the truck rolled onto its side, sending Mick crashing into oblivion along with it.

* * *

There was a fierce buzzing in his ears that would not stop. He tried to open his eyes but they refused to cooperate. He attempted to say something, call out for Danny, ask what the hell was going on, but all he could manage was a quiet groan.

He felt a tugging at his shoulder and groaned as cuts and bruises were aggravated by the pull of the material. His shoulder throbbed mercilessly and his side felt wet.

"Come on, mate," came Danny's desperate plea from above him. "Don't do this to me, not now!"

Mick forced his eyes open and tried not to throw up as the images swam before him, bringing a violent sense of nausea along with it. He waited for a moment, allowing his stomach to settle and his vision to focus, then he made the mistake of trying to sit up only to be left gasping for air as a searing pain lanced its way through his ribcage and down through his abdomen.

"Easy, Mick," Danny warned before carefully helping his friend into a seated position. The spotter waited until his friend had somewhat caught his breath and on a resigned nod from his partner, he gently steered Mick towards the back of the truck.

Mick could barely keep upright and he was trying to remember what could possibly have happened to make him feel so broken. He knew he had been feeling pretty rough long before he stepped into the vehicle, but surely he would have remembered if the pain had been so strong, so constant, so agonisingly piercing!

Once outside, he allowed himself to sag against his friend. Danny Wallcroft was a fiercely loyal friend and one that had been there for Mick more times than he could count. Just as always, Danny was by his side when the going got tough, silently giving his support and his strength.

He gave himself a couple of minutes, listening to the steady heartbeat of his friend as he tried to match his breathing. Once his breath had somewhat evened out, Mick once more attempted to open his eyes and focus on the scene before him.

Hauser was sitting down, a shell-shocked expression on his face. He looked a little battered, but no more than he had done after a session with Fahim.

Steele was standing quietly behind the German, his face a picture of concern as he looked up at Mick. They had all formed tentative friendships during their captivity and while he wasn't anywhere near as close to the other two as he was to Danny, Mick still wanted them to get out of this as whole and as healthy as possible. Perhaps they _all_ felt just that bit more protective of Steele because he was so young. The sniper tried to offer him a reassuring smile but he knew he had failed when the American PFC's frown merely deepened. In that one expression, Mick could see exactly what the experience had cost the young American – eighteen years old and he looked at least ten years older!

Mick turned to look at his long-time friend. Danny, like the others, was a little battered and bruised. The way he held his free hand protectively over the side of his chest suggested damage to the ribs and Mick could only hope there was nothing going on internally. Despite his obvious pain and fatigue, Danny was smiling.

"Home stretch now, Mick," he said, his Cockney twang thicker for his exhaustion.

Mick tried to return the smile but found he simply didn't have the energy for it and knew Danny would see straight through it anyway. The home stretch was a hell of a long one and the likelihood of stumbling upon a friendly patrol was less than small.

He realised that if the other men were taking the time to catch their breath then their former captors were no longer a threat, but Mick needed to see for himself. He looked past Danny's shoulder towards the vehicle.

The truck was on its side, driver-side up. The canvas sheeting over the main bed of the vehicle was torn and several of the supports were mangled. There was a thin wisp of smoke rising from the engine and fuel was leaking, snaking a path across the sand. They were lucky to get out in one piece!

Mick hobbled over slightly until he could see into the cab, and felt nothing but relief when he saw the blood on the fractured windscreen, almost afraid that their demise was something conjured by a desperate imagination. He had not one ounce of fight left in him and he didn't know what he would or _could_ do if Fahim and the driver were still functional. He edged closer, aware that if there was a chance they were alive and ready to fire off a shot, no matter how small, the risk was necessary – the escapees _needed_ to know what they were up against. Danny limped alongside him, acting as a crutch, tense and ready for action.

The driver was hanging from his seat in a grotesque fashion, like a marionette with all but one of its strings cut. The seatbelt held him to his seat and Mick could see the drivers eyes were wide open, staring sightlessly ahead. The blood had stopped pouring from a head wound that could only have been caused by a bullet and Mick knew without crawling into the truck's cab to check for a pulse that the young man was dead.

As for Fahim, he already knew the man was likely dead, but he needed to be sure. He needed to reassure himself that Fahim was indeed gone, certain that he would never get another night's sleep if he didn't know for sure.

After all the man had put him through, put Danny through, after he had witnessed Fahim mercilessly shooting Anderson in the liver leaving the Ranger to suffer a drawn out and agonising death, after seeing the constant glint of satisfaction in his eyes while he was carrying out his torturous questioning, Mick had _dreamed_ of standing over his dead body.

It shocked Mick, realising just how much hatred he had for that one man. He had only ever felt that strongly once before, over the two men who had murdered most of his family. His parents' murder had been a brief but terrifying nightmare in his young life, with far-reaching consequences. That one night had stretched on far longer than he had ever thought was possible, and an end to it had frequently seemed impossible at the time.

He had been a child then, helpless against a psychotically violent hatred that he had never encountered before. He had been rash and quick to act if only because the fear of what might happen to him was completely overshadowed by his complete lack of comprehension at the true horror of the situation – that kind of understanding would come later on in life, along with the nightmares.

No matter how hard he had tried, how hard he had fought, he had been unable to save his parents, unable to save his older sister. He had been utterly and completely unprepared and unable to win that kind of fight. With Fahim, it had been different.

With Fahim, he had been an adult, and a highly trained soldier at that. His skill with a rifle was unparalleled in the UKSF. He was more than proficient with his sidearm and his combat knife, and his CQC was finely tuned.

His rough childhood had meant he'd gone into the military with quick but undisciplined street fighting skills, rough and raw and all dirty tactics – anything and everything to survive. The military had taken those skills and turned it into a more refined form of self-defence. He'd gone on to learn the basics of many more fighting disciplines, from Krav Maga to Aikido.

He'd been trained not only in how to fight, but in how to resist interrogation and find possible means of escape. Yet all that training had seemed so irrelevant in the face of reality. Fahim had diminished him to an FNG, a squaddie at the beginning of his basic training. His morale had plummeted, his health had taken a swan-dive and his mental capabilities had been stunted by the constant pain and sheer exhaustion.

Despite all of his training, all of his skills, Mick had found himself feeling once more like that helpless child from so long ago. The fact that he _should_ have been able to better handle the situation left a bitter taste in his mouth and gave him yet another reason to despise Fahim.

The knife was still embedded in the man's throat, although it had obviously been moved during the crash – the wound was large and gaping, the knife slick with blood. Fahim was flat against the shattered remains of his side-window, blood mixing with shards of glass and sand.

He found himself sagging against his friend as relief overcame him. The adrenaline was slowly fading from his system, and as his energy ebbed away he found his injuries coming once more to the forefront.

"We need to get out of here," he said, his voice rough and raw.

"I know," the spotter agreed.

"We should check the bodies and the truck for anything useful," Mick suggested, all too aware that he would not be doing any of the searching. He felt useless, a dead weight that was more hindrance than help.

"Good idea," Danny said softly into his friend's ear, increasingly worried about the sniper's physical state. He had managed to pull Mick mostly back into the storage hold before the vehicle tipped, doing what he could to secure him and stop him from banging around too much.

The bloody gash was a clear sign that he had hit his head at some point during the crash, and Danny thought there was likely some damage to his right shoulder, given the way Mick was resolutely trying not to move it even a millimetre.

He slowly moved the man towards the back of the vehicle to where the other men were waiting before setting him down next to Hauser.

"See what you can do for him," Danny asked the aid worker, a pleading quality to his voice. "Use _anything_ you can see that might be useful."

Joseph nodded, unsure if he could really do anything for the haggard looking man slumped to the ground before him. He started doing a rough inventory of the soldier's injuries, trying to get some idea of what, if anything, he could do to ease the man's pain.

Meanwhile, Wallcroft and Steele headed back towards the truck. They started on the guards first, the guns being the most obvious items to take. The utility belts both held a little ammo, a small military compass and a single, slightly rusty combat knife – they joined the guns in a pile outside the vehicle.

They took off the men's jackets, aware that a night exposed to the Iraqi desert risked hypothermia if they were not warm enough. Socks also came off, an added layer of protection against the cold for the fleeing men. Their own boots had been returned to them only as they were being moved to the truck, but they were unlaced, so they quickly took some from their enemy’s footwear. Danny also stripped both guards of their t-shirts – they were not the cleanest items of clothing, but they would do to make a sling and perhaps even as emergency pressure bandages.

He then moved towards the front of the vehicle, climbing through the window and stripping the two men of anything useful before handing them through the opening to Steele. Once the men had been searched and disarmed, including the embedded knife, Danny quickly checked the rest of the cab, elated at finding a first aid box. It was small, with only the most rudimentary of supplies left inside, but there was clean gauze and even some antiseptic cream – useless in the long term, but it would hopefully keep the worst of their injuries somewhat clean until they could find their way back to safety and a well-equipped med. tent.

There was also a map of the local area. It was only a small, local map, one that covered a largely flat and inhospitable desert region – rough roads and small hamlets were printed, additional markers added in pen. He had no idea where they were, but hopefully once they matched up their surroundings they would at least have some idea of which direction to head in and which areas to avoid, thanks to the handmade markings.

Grabbing a half-consumed bottle of water, a watch with a broken face, and a torch with a couple of what he hoped were spare full batteries rather than used ones, he left the cabin and then started to search the few items strewn about in the cargo-hold. Thankfully, there were a few items of food and water – it was not much, but if they were careful in their rationing and lucky in finding a water source then they would be able to last a couple of days. Unfortunately, there was not much else to find.

He exited the vehicle and headed over to Mick and the German aid worker who was doing his best to examine the sniper's injuries. Danny handed over the aid kit and settled down next to Mick with the map at hand, ready to distract his friend from his treatment.

"I think we're about here," he said, pointing to a particular spot on the map before gesturing to another, "and given the direction we were travelling in, I'm guessing _this_ is where they had us."

"Looks about right," Mick offered after squinting at the surrounding countryside, picking out potential markers he could faintly make out on the darkening horizon.

"I think we need to head East, North-East, that general direction, in order to avoid these markers. If we stick close to the roads for long enough we may even see a road sign, tell us where we are in the grand scheme of things. We could even bump into a patrol."

"Could be an enemy patrol," Mick pointed out.

"Yeah," Danny sighed. He wasn't sure if they could risk going too far off-road though. _Everyone_ was banged up, Mick worryingly so, and he wasn't sure how well any of them would cope over the more rough and rugged terrain that the roads snaked their way through. They desperately needed medical attention, as well as food and water, and they needed to be in a position that allowed them to be found sooner rather than later so that they could get those things. "But maybe that's a risk we need to take," he finally offered.

"Yeah," Mick agreed despondently. "It's night, hopefully anything coming will have headlights and we'll see them in plenty of time, or we'll hear the engine and we can duck down into a ditch or something. We may need to move further away from the road during daylight hours, though," Mick suggested, already thinking to the amount of time they could be walking. "If the worst comes to the worst, we could always hijack a vehicle but I don't think that's something we should do unless we're _really_ desperate, given we don’t know how far we are from anywhere."

Danny held off on saying that they _were_ desperate. Hijacking a vehicle could lead to all sorts of problems, not least of which was that they had no idea just who they would be pulling over. A lot of people in the more remote regions were armed, either because they were involved in the fighting or to protect themselves from it – it wouldn't do to escape captivity only to get gunned down by a heavily-armed goat-herder!

There was also the risk that a hijacking would direct the very people they were trying to escape to their general location. The fact that they didn't know where they were, and how far _or_ how much fuel they would need to get to safety put them at danger of recapture. The RoE's and general ethics also dictated that they didn't drag helpless civilians into a dangerous situation.

"Come on, then," Danny stated, hauling himself to his feet and trying to stop from groaning out loud as his aches and pains reasserted themselves. Mick would refuse Danny's help if he suspected for one second that he would burden his friend with more pain by relying upon his aid. "We should put as much distance as we can between us and this as we can," he said gesturing towards the vehicle and its dead occupants.

"Wait," Mick said, grunting in effort as he rose, helped by his friend. "The canvas sheeting," he said, pointing towards the torn material. "We could use it for extra cover, and it could be pretty good camouflage against the desert."

"Good idea," Danny nodded. "Hold on a sec." he said before getting Hauser to steady his friend. He went to the pile of weapons and picked up the bloody combat knife he had removed from Fahim’s throat. It was an American weapon and could well have come from Steele or even Anderson. It was the sharper of the two knives they had and he used it to cut off sections of the heavy canvas sheeting.

He was in no way an expert with materials, but his time with the military had taught him the basics of sewing and attending to his equipment. Using very rough skills, he cut four large squares of material before cutting a hole in the middle, making a poncho-style item of clothing. It would be heavier than any of them would like, but it would offer an added layer of protection from both the daytime sun and the night-time cold, and it would require no painful lifting of limbs to wear.

As Danny was fiddling on with the sheeting, Steele had gathered up the extra clothing removed from the guards and was handing them out, trying to get the sizing as close as he could manage. Hauser helped Mick put on his extra pair of socks, much to the Welshman's embarrassment, before threading the newly acquired laces through his boots and firmly tying them.

Each man got a utility belt and while the German adamantly refused to carry a gun, the young American insisted. He didn't have to fire it, but if the aid worker carried one then Mick would not be carrying any more than his battered body could manage and the other two soldiers would be free to move about with a greater degree of dexterity, unburdened by the extra weapons and free to provide some much-needed protection.

As Hauser fiddled on with the gauze and make-shift bandages for his newest injuries, Mick studied the map and tried to recall the detailed maps of the larger AO back at the FOB. Following the roads would be dangerous and going further into the desert could end up being their only option, but Mick didn't want to do so without forward planning. Being lost out in the cold wilds of the desert could be just as deadly as facing any potential enemy patrols along the roads.

Eventually they were all loaded up, wearing their new clothes and the makeshift ponchos. There would be no Hollywood-esque return to base, with the heroes looking perfectly fine with only a little dirt to show for all their trials and tribulations – they had been through hell and it showed. Mick knew they looked ridiculous, like some rag-tag group of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world, but survival was the most important thing and if their improvisations worked then he really didn't care who saw them.

Danny came and stood by his side, carefully levering Mick's uninjured left arm over his shoulder before setting off, east along the road. Hauser's ribs were clearly causing the man a lot of discomfort and the soldiers decided to leave the civilian relatively unburdened unless the situation demanded a switch, in which case, it was decided that the aid worker would take Mick while the other two provided cover-fire. Steele, as the healthiest of all of them, was on point, rifle at the ready.

Mick felt utterly useless, leaning on his friend as they limped their way down the road. Everything ached and he was beyond exhausted. He felt like giving up and lying down in a ditch somewhere until the pain died down and his eyes didn't ache simply by being open. But then he thought of the man by his side, about the brothers-in-arms he had waiting for them back at base, and he thought about his sister, who had already lost so much.

With added determination, he stood a little straighter and soldiered on, trying to push his aches and pains to the back of his mind.

* * *

"Come on, Mick, talk to me," Danny said, as he felt his friend becoming heavier in his arms. They had spent the night of the crash walking east along the road, crossing paths with no other traffic. They were moving slowly, thanks to injury and caution. Once day broke, they moved slightly away from the road, near enough so that they could see it, but far enough away that the canvas sheeting could act as sufficient camouflage should they suspected enemy patrols.

At some stage during the night, they passed the road that they believed would take them back to the compound, and they hoped that anyone looking for the missing men would go there first. They had only seen one vehicle the entire time they had been walking, and while they were relieved that they were not spending their time ducking and diving and analysing threats, they were also worried about the clear remoteness of the region they found themselves stuck in.

Danny was also increasingly worried about his friend. Mick had clearly been fighting hard to continue on through the night, the cold affecting him more in his weakened state than the others. He had not once complained but then again, Mick could give lessons in stoicism to Zeno!

However, it had become increasingly clear as the second night began that he was at the end of his tether. His weight against Danny had become more pronounced and he seemed to have trouble holding his head upright. Stumbles happened more frequently and painful groans worked their way out of him.

Just as that second night fell, they had been beset by a cold rain. The canvas sheeting acted somewhat as a buffer, but water had seeped through the hole about the neck and their wet clothes and the cool night air had them all shivering. Worryingly, Mick had stopped his shivering almost half an hour ago and Danny was carefully looking out for any _more_ signs of hypothermia, anxious about the dangers of the next stage.

Several times Danny had offered to stop, let everyone take a breather, but Mick was adamant that they continue, anxious that the others not risk recapture by accommodating his injuries.

"Talk!" Danny urged, trying to keep his friend awake and alert and focused on anything but the pain he was undoubtedly feeling with every step.

"About what?" Mick mumbled tiredly.

"Anything!" Danny desperately searched for something that would keep Mick focused, something that meant a lot to the man whilst at the same time, not diving into any great emotional minefields that were just as likely to cause the man to clam up tighter than an oyster. "Jenna! Tell me about Jenna!"

"There is no reason in the world why you would _ever_ need to know _anything_ about my sister," Mick replied, part bewildered, part cautionary.

"Come on! I remember her at the passing out parade."

"She was a kid then!" Mick exclaimed with a low, warning growl to his tone.

"So were we," Danny pointed out. "She was a cute kid back then, likelihood is she's a pretty young woman now, right?" he asked. Deliberately trying to raise his friend’s ire.

He remembered her vividly. Huge brown eyes framed by a mess of dark waves, an elfin figure and a pale complexion that made her seem so vulnerable on that blustery, dreary winter's day all those years ago.

He remembered the way her clear dissatisfaction with the weather had morphed into a bright smile the moment her big brother made his way over to her in a crisp uniform and a hard-earned red beret, easily catching her as she launched herself, squealing with joyous laughter, into his arms for a fierce hug.

He remembered the way that Mick had returned the smile, a _genuine_ smile. Too often he had seen his friend smirk or grin like the Cheshire Cat himself, but rarely had he seen such an honest smile as the one his sister had elicited. There was no sarcastic lilt, no sneer working its way up at the corner of his mouth. It seemed Mick was as open and honest in his emotions as it was possible to be if his sister was on the receiving end.

Family had always been a no-go area with Mick as far as conversations went, but that wet and windy winter's day had shown Danny that while his friend may not talk much about what little remained of his family, his sister meant the world to him.

"She's off limits to you," Mick promised. "No way is she getting involved with a soldier."

"I won't always be a soldier," Danny offered with a sly grin. Mick's only response was a baleful glare. "You know, you almost managed to look threatening there, mate," Danny gave him a gentle slap on the back. "If it wasn't for the fact that I'm the only thing keeping you upright, I'd be worried."

"You're a dick," Mick said simply, before refocusing on putting one foot in front of the other.

Danny laughed. He'd purposefully riled his friend up, eager to see something of the usual spark back in Mick's eyes. Mick was fiercely protective of his friends and even more so over his little sister. Talking shit about Jenna, even in jest, was a sure-fire way to get a reaction out of the younger man.

He was about to carry on the friendly ribbing when he caught a set of headlights in the distance, moving along the very road they were walking on, headed in their direction.

"We've got company!" he heard Steele shout from his position on point.

Mick sighed and sagged against his friend before summoning up the last scrap of energy he had and attempted to stand up straight, gun at the ready. With a shared look, Danny knew they were going to stop the vehicle. Mick could not manage much more of the hard trek across the desert, and Hauser's civilian background had become more than apparent at daybreak after the first night – he too was struggling to keep one foot in front of the other.

Everyone's energy levels were low. They were out of water and their food store was almost depleted. They were all suffering through the beginnings of hypothermia, the rainfall at dusk chilling them through to the bone once night set in. Mick's bandage around his abdomen had become unravelled several times and both he and Danny had minor infections setting in, their wounds red and raw and seeping through the make-shift bandages.

Danny nodded his acquiescence to the plan, knowing they had little to no choice, aware that they were out of options. Mick ordered everyone into position. Hauser and Steele went to one side of the road, using the ditches for cover. The German hunkered down in the dirt, ready to reload the spare rifle for the young PFC, while Mick and Danny took the other side of the road, training and adrenaline once more putting their aches and pains on hold as they focused on the problem at hand.

The vehicle came closer, and once it was about 300 yards out, Danny fired a warning shot overhead. The vehicle stopped, and several dark figures exited, finding cover in the ditches along the roadside.

The half-hidden shadows returned fire.

* * *

** PFC ** **_–_ ** ** Private First Class ** **_, a rank held by junior enlisted personnel._ **

** CQC ** **_–_ ** ** Close Quarters Combat ** **_, also known as_ ** ** CQB ** **_,_ ** ** Close Quarters Battle ** **_. Can be armed combat but also refers to hand-to-hand fighting._ **

** Krav Maga ** **_– a form of self-defence used by the Israeli military, praised worldwide for its effective assimilation of a wide variety of fighting techniques, from martial arts, to boxing, to street-fighting._ **

** Aikido ** **_– a Japanese martial art, with heavy emphasis on both the physical and spiritual sides of the discipline._ **

** Squaddie ** **_– slang term for a soldier._ **

** Zeno ** **_– the founder of_ ** ** Stoicism ** **_in C3 rd BC. _ ** ** Stoicism ** **_is the belief that destructive emotions are the result of errors in judgement and that with self-control, fortitude and logic, these destructive emotions could be overcome. Control over errant emotions is a key component to the philosophy._ **


	8. Chapter 8

Hassan Saifa had started the day full of nervous excitement. It was his first solo interrogation and he was eager to find out just how far he had come with his skills, while at the same time, worried about working alone. It was easier with two people doing the interrogations – one to ask the questions and one to observe, someone who could intervene with another method if the first wasn't working, someone to play off.

He loved working with Sam Cooper. The man was perhaps a little too intense for him at times, and Hassan was sure that had they met under normal circumstances, neither one of them would have been natural friends. However, they had certainly _not_ met under normal circumstances and as they had been thrown together, thousands of miles from home, they had sought comfort and companionship in each other.

Sam was an intelligent man, prone to long periods of brooding before jumping into a weighty metaphysical discussion that, as a philosophy major, Hassan enjoyed even if he didn't always agree with Sam's rather more spiritual-based beliefs. He found it interesting to have his views and opinions challenged by a man who always respected his beliefs but liked people to think things through, and from more than one point of view. More than one of his views had been dissected and given a new understanding.

Sometimes, he wondered why Sam did the work he did. He knew the man had been unhappy with the way things had turned out at the FBI and knew that Sam ached to do something that made a difference. Military Intelligence seemed the logical choice given the state of the world at the time he left the FBI. His skill-set was easily accommodated by the military and there was the possibility that any intel he gathered could save lives.

But Cooper was a hugely compassionate man, sometimes too much so, as it clearly wore him down and his faith in the world was constantly battered - like the tides against the shore it dissolved bit by bit, until there was a huge and sudden collapse. Hassan had been there for two such collapses. One was after Sam had been involved in uncovering the truth about the atrocities at Abu Ghraib. The other was more recent – an unprovoked attack on unarmed Iraqi civilians, facilitated by intel Sam had helped gather.

The man had been inconsolable, and despite trying to help Sam realise that the guilt lay not at _his_ feet but at the feet of those who _did_ the actual shooting, Hassan knew the man still prayed in penance every day, but that was not an entirely foreign concept to the younger man. Hassan felt as though he, too, had plenty to atone for in his life.

That was one of the main motivators behind Hassan's own career path, but it had not always been the case. There was a time when he was far more in favour of proactive military action, a fight-first-and-don't-bother-with-questions-later approach.

During his late-teens, he had learnt the truth about why his parents had left Lebanon. He'd lost a great many members of his family in the Sabra and Shatila massacre of 1982 in Lebanon. Many of those lives could have been saved if the invading Israeli forces had intervened during the atrocity – the Israeli advance may have violated the original ceasefire, but regardless, their soldiers were there and in a position to stop the mass murder.

However, instead of helping the victims, they stood by and blocked off the exits to the Sabra neighbourhood and the nearby Shatila refugee camp, stopping scared men, women and children from escaping the bloody carnage. They even aided the Christian Phalangists by illuminating the dark skies with flares, enabling the killings to continue through the nights.

For a long time after learning the truth, Hassan had felt a burning hatred eat away at him. He'd wanted justice and he'd wanted to _do_ something! He was furious that so many had died because no one had thought it important enough to assess the potential fallout, the lust for revenge and the continuous religious upheaval in the region.

After the assassination of the newly-elected Lebanese President, an act wrongly thought to have been carried out by the PLO, the Kataeb Party sought to avenge their fallen leader. Israel invaded in 1982 with the same aim, to hunt down the PLO, and the two groups naturally ended up working together.

The result was yet another massacre, in a long line of massacres, which continued the bloody struggle between Palestinian and Lebanese Muslims, and the Christians - fundamentalist militants on _both_ sides taking their prejudices to the extreme and leaving a bloody trail throughout Lebanon's history.

Hassan obviously felt fuelled by the '82 massacre more than the history of the continuing struggle – he had lost aunts and uncles, cousins and grandparents, and he had even lost his older brother, all over the course of those two days. He may not remember them, having been only a baby at the time, but he knew that the events had denied him a large part of his family and his heritage.

His parents were sad and depressed every time mid-September rolled around as they mourned their fallen loved ones, and he shared in their anger that Ariel Sharon, a man found by an Israeli Commission to bear ' _personal_ _responsibility'_ for the atrocity, a man who eventually had to resign his post as Defence Minister for his actions, was able to stand as Prime Minister. That had been the start of his interest in global politics.

For a short time during his early university years, Hassan had been an active radical when it came to politics. For a while, he had been very vociferous in his views on the people of Israel, and against the neighbouring state's constant incursions into Lebanon and its treatment of the Palestinian people. On the whole though, he tended to stay away from religious fundamentalism - for him, although the massacre had been fuelled by _religious_ differences, it was _politicians_ and _soldiers_ that could have avoided the bloodshed, not priests, rabbis and imams.

His parents had been worried by the path he was seemingly set on, and they had sat him down and tried to talk some sense into him many a time, told him that you cannot always hold a people responsible for the actions of their state. They told him that some of the loudest protestors against the wrongs being perpetrated in Lebanon and Gaza were coming from _inside_ Israel. They told him of many prominent Jewish lawyers and the everyday citizens who did what they could to publicise the plight of millions caused by the actions of a few statesmen.

But he had not been ready to see reason, so caught up was he in the brotherhood of his cause, and so blinded by the sheer excitement of his political radicalisation and finding somewhere an Islamic Lebanese refugee could fit in with no questions asked.

Then, something happened.

It was a bright, crisp autumn morning and he was making his way from Tribeca to the university when an almighty bang shook him from his thoughts. Almost as one, the morning crowd turned to look at one of New York's most prominent landmarks. The top of the North Tower was obscured by a ball of smoke, and even from where he was Hassan could see the flickering orange flames.

There was a sense of disbelief at first. Hassan heard someone say that they thought they had seen a plane crash into the top of the tower. It was a hard concept to buy into. Planes over New York were a common enough sight but there were all sorts of guidelines in effect to avoid any low-flying planes going too close to the skyscrapers that dotted the city's busy Manhattan skyline.

Human curiosity took over, and people started to make their way towards the smoking building, eager and horrified all at once to find out what had happened, and Hassan found his feet moving of their own accord to follow the crowd. Before, he had been thinking about his latest assignment and manoeuvring his way through the morning rush, but afterwards, his eyes were fixed on the burning North Tower so he could not fail to miss the low-flying plane that ploughed into the South Tower.

Before there had been shock and morbid curiosity, but it quickly turned into panic. One plane crash might have been an accident, but two? Throughout downtown Manhattan, the air was full of the smell of smoke and the noise of sirens reverberated from the tall buildings. Some people were on their phones, full of panic and tears as they tried to get through to loved ones who worked in the Towers or nearby.

Hassan had stood and watched it all, from the flames of that first crash to the moment the second plane hit the South Tower, from falling objects that he sickeningly realised were people, to the collapse of both buildings. He had stood watching it all, horrified and shocked and wondering what the hell was going on. He realised he would probably get more information from a news channel, but he was simply unable to tear his eyes away from the tragedy unfurling before him.

In the weeks and months that followed, information was released and roundtables discussed to death the politics behind it all. But what Hassan remembered was the sudden and dark change in atmosphere in the _'Land of the Free'_.

There were several hate crimes perpetrated inside the US directed at innocent Muslims, and even Sikhs who were mistakenly taken to be members of the Islamic faith. Hysteria and anger overtook common sense and the uninformed were seeing fundamentalists everywhere. Racist diatribes could be found in every echelon of society and America became a scary place for anyone of clear Middle-East descent.

Of course, the US was not the only place in the world that was suffering from a sudden change in attitudes. America had long been a target for Islamic fundamentalists, but the rhetoric coming from the Al Qaeda broadcasts had certainly stepped up a gear and sympathetic clerics could be heard from London to Cairo to Manila.

Some of the things they were spouting were some of the same things that had been said in Hassan's radical meetings on campus. Al Qaeda cited US foreign policy, especially where Israel was concerned, as a major factor for what had occurred on that sunny autumn morning that would forever be etched on his mind. Being forced to compare himself to the extremists he was hearing on the news brought about a serious re-evaluation of his true beliefs.

While he had once been naïve enough to place all the blame on one state, those few months after September 11th forced him to grow up and accept that his previous beliefs had been ridiculously one-sided and about as far from impartial as he could get. Just as he had blamed Israel for all the wrongs imposed upon his family, Al Qaeda was blaming the US for all their problems. He could not see how the fallout from those views, and the terrible way it affected thousands of innocent lives, could ever be justified.

Of course, the Bush administration was quick to react and to condemn. Hassan couldn't understand how they could be so blind as to the sheer hatred parts of the world held for America, and any reactionary invasion would surely only heighten that sentiment. He couldn't understand why innocent civilians were going to be made to pay for the actions of a terrorist faction and the reactions of a few statesmen.

Then he remembered what his parents had told him. Those fundamentalist rants and the Bush administration's gung-ho reactions to the events of 9/11 had done what common sense and his parent's pleading had not accomplished. Hassan had been awakened to the truth. That retaliation after retaliation could never lead to any kind of resolution. That civilians were always going to be caught up in someone else's war. That prevention was better than reaction.

Hassan went to university and studied philosophy not because he had any sort of career in mind, but because he had been intrigued by the subject. As the years of his course went by, and the future loomed, he'd often asked himself what he wanted to do. At first, he thought he wanted to go back to Lebanon, teach there and do something constructive, uncover his traditional heritage and _'find himself'_.

But after 9/11, after being forced to thoroughly reflect on who he was and what was most important to him, on what he _truly_ believed, then he knew that while he would love to visit Lebanon and discover more about where he came from, he was an American.

English was his first language. _'The Sopranos'_ was his favourite TV show. He loved listening to Bruce Springsteen, Nirvana and Counting Crows. He could never get enough of touring the American Museum of Natural History and the Met, and taking the ferry out to Ellis Island. He adored diner food and found nothing better than a walk round Central Park on a cool winter's afternoon.

He realised that for all of the ways he disagreed with much of his country's policies, he enjoyed the freedoms he was allowed. He had the right to express his dissatisfaction, he could protest on the street or he could write an article or post a blog without fear of reprisal. Many countries did not allow for such liberties.

With the benefits of a good education, he had a chance at doing something important. Bush and his troops were going into Afghanistan all gung-ho and desperate to avenge 9/11 and innocent civilians were likely to suffer from the actions of _both_ sides.

Hassan didn't speak Pashto or Dari, but he could learn them. He could go out there and he could make sure that the intelligence US forces received was as reliable as possible. He could make sure as few innocent people were killed as possible. He could make sure no one stood by while vengeful forces sought retribution for actual or imagined wrongs. He could do what was _not_ done in '82.

When he had first arrived in Afghanistan, he had thrown himself headlong into his job, eager to prove, not only to those he answered to but also to himself, that he was capable of doing something good. He believed that he needed to make amends for his earlier radical beliefs that were built largely on assumptions and a need to fit in. He felt he needed to make amends for his naïve, simplistic view of the world, for his blind ignorance.

His anger and his hatred did not completely die, but he no longer let that hatred guide him and he refused to let it overrun his logic and his newfound understanding that revenge against the actions of a few had far-reaching consequences, and ones that were usually felt by the wrong people.

He'd made a few mistakes early on in his new career, made assumptions based on too little evidence that lead to wasted man hours, and on one occasion, a soldier who ended up losing a leg due to incorrect intel. After that, he'd been paired up with Sam.

At first he resented it, hated the fact that his superiors felt he needed a babysitter, but over time he had come to appreciate Sam and all that he offered. He'd learnt a lot from the profiler, and he had greatly come to respect the man. He'd even talked to him about his earlier involvement in radical political groups, and confessed his shame about some of his more racist beliefs when he had allowed himself to be pulled into the depths of the fundamental group he had once loved as a second family.

Cooper had been very understanding and they had shared many discussions about why Hassan had felt the need to fit in with certain people. It had been illuminating and the self-reflection had helped him grow. Sam had always been there when the task got hard, but his constant, quiet and non-judgemental support had been invaluable. So much so that Hassan felt more grounded than he ever had before – not something he ever expected to find in the deserts of a war-torn country!

So now, he was on the way back from questioning a local informant - an old man that was viewed with a great deal of suspicion by Military Intelligence, as some of his information had led soldiers straight into the middle of an ambush. Hassan was inclined to trust him – they were in a war-zone, after all, and ambushes had to be expected, and the man had risked a great deal simply by talking to the soldiers.

His careful handling of the informant had paid off and he now had some fresh intel about movement at a small settlement called Al Halaba to the north-west. Apparently heavy insurgency activity, carried out by suspected members of AQI, had started without any visible reason, but given that patrols had been stretched beyond their usual routes there was a worry that they were getting ready to act against allied soldiers in the area.

He had been escorted up by a small group of Marines in a single battered Humvee in an effort to avoid drawing too much attention to themselves or their informant. They were making their way back to the FOB under the cover of darkness, and Hassan had found himself relaxing in the back, the quiet desert and the now common thrum of a Humvee engine soothing him to sleep at the end of a long day.

He was feeling proud of his accomplishments and couldn't wait to inform Sam of his success. He took no small measure of pride that it had been Sam who had recommended him for the interview with the old farmer. With his mentor's solid endorsement, Hassan finally felt as though he were beginning to accomplish his goals in joining Military Intelligence in the first place.

Of course, all his proud reflections stopped the moment a lone shot caused the Marines to swiftly stop the vehicle at a standard forty-five-degree angle, before quickly exiting and taking up defensive positions and returning fire.

* * *

"Shit!" Danny ducked down in the ditch as low as he could manage as the bullets started flying towards them.

"That's friendly!" Mick shouted, so the other two men would know not to fire back. He recognised the sound of the shots as belonging to the M16 assault rifle and while there was a chance that they were weapons hijacked by enemy combatants, he didn't want to risk a friendly-fire incident.

"Steele, throw me the damn torch!" he ordered the young American PFC.

The soldiers were too far away to hear them easily over the rain and the wind and the steady staccato of gunfire. They had only one option that Mick could think of and he didn't much relish the idea of having survived five weeks of torment before a daring escape, only to be aerated by their potential rescuers.

Ben threw the torch over to where he could just about make out the two British soldiers huddled down in the dirt before quickly nestling back down in the earth on his side of the road, making sure the civilian aid worker, Joseph Hauser, was safely tucked away behind him.

Mick took a deep breath before bringing himself up to the side of the road, Danny furiously whispering threats about the future safety of certain parts of his anatomy should he even _think_ about getting shot again. He held the torch as high as he dared, and though his fingers were numb and barely responsive, he started tapping out a message in Morse code, as quickly as he dared without giving up the integrity of the message.

At first there was no noticeable reaction to the flashing message, other than the soldiers using the light as a spot to concentrate their fire on, and Mick was thankful for the distance between them that made their accuracy just that little less certain. However, by the time he was on the third loop of his message, the firing had stopped and by the time he had finished his forth loop, there was a response. Too tired to explain it all via a torch, Mick simply signalled four letters, _'UKSF'_.

He received the message to stay where they were and to hold fire in their direction, at which point he found himself sinking into the muddy earth beneath him, relief that their ordeal was finally coming to a close.

"Hold fire, friendlies coming in from the East," he said to the other men who were nervously waiting in the dark, missing most of the coded messages that had been passed back and forth as their heads had been almost face-down in the mud in an effort to minimise the risk of getting hit.

"Thank fuck for that," Danny sighed as he rolled over onto his back, careful not to jar his injuries. "I'm not sure how effective any of us would have been in an all-out firefight," he confessed quietly to Mick.

He knew that the Welshman was at the end of his tether and once again, Danny found himself feeling all but responsible for the man's condition – from the torture Mick had endured because Fahim had misinterpreted Danny's actions, to the bullet Mick had taken, one that had _clearly_ had Danny's name all over it, the Welshman's pain seemed to know no end.

He looked at his long-time friend and tried to assess how badly off he was and whether or not he would make it back to base without falling to shock and hypothermia. The gunshot wound was hidden from view due to their makeshift ponchos from the canvas sheeting of the truck, but the pain was evident in the tightness of his lips and the slight scrunching of the eyes. The bronzed complexion from the desert sun had long been lost during their five weeks of captivity, but Mick's face was so gaunt, so utterly wan that he could easily pass for a corpse. The stiff manner in which he held himself spoke to internal damage and Danny could only hope it was limited to some broken ribs and that there was no internal bleeding – he didn't think he could handle it if he was to find out that they had slowly been walking Mick to death.

Hauser was clearly feeling the effects of _his_ injuries, too, as he had been flagging before even the first night had ended. Despite both Danny and Ben taking the majority of the equipment, Hauser had struggled to keep pace with them, his breathing erratic and a sharp intake of breath every few steps indicative of serious pain.

Danny was impressed with the civilian. The only time the man had ever actually complained out loud was at the prospect of being forced to carry a gun. Despite his obvious fatigue and the ever-present pain that all of them were suffering through, the aid worker bore it all with a determinedly stoic approach that most soldiers would have struggled to maintain for such a duration.

Benjamin Steele was in the best physical shape of them all, but because of that the young American had taken it upon himself to carry the majority of the equipment, citing Mick and Hauser's pain, and the fact that Danny was acting as Mick's crutch as reasons for his pack mule behaviour.

He was clearly exhausted and Danny wouldn't be surprised if the man collapsed on the spot once they stepped foot back inside the wire of the FOB, but the stubborn son of a bitch was doggedly determined to carry on until the end. Whatever else might happen, he would certainly be recommending to Steele’s OC that he be given a citation, if not a medal, at the very least, and he knew that Mick likely intended to do the same.

As for himself, he was stiff and sore and the constant stabbing of pain had been eating away at him since the crash. Helping Mick all that way had depleted his reserves of strength and brought him to the brink of his capability to remain upright. Of course, he couldn't let any of that show, because he knew that Mick would take the blame for his pain in a heart-beat. The man could be as cocky as hell, but he also seemed to have an incredibly proficient ability to take on responsibility for the actions of others. He loved his friend dearly, but sometimes… _sometimes_ Mick could be a real fucking idiot!

"Allied forces?" came a tentative voice from the dark, a soft Texan twang to the accent. There was always a lot of crap tossed about between soldiers, mostly in jest, of all ethnic and geographical differences, but Danny had never been so glad to hear an American accent as in that moment.

"Thank God!" he breathed out, struggling to his feet as he saw Mick try to do the same thing. One of the newcomers rushed in to help Mick, while another came to Danny's aid.

"Corporal Rawson," Mick said, offering a hand to his helper. A strict no-salute policy was normally in effect anywhere an enemy spotter could identify the bigwigs of the military world, and so deference was usually all in the tone once out in the field. "This is Corporal Wallcroft, and that is Private Steele. We've got a civilian, Joseph Hauser," he indicated the weary looking German, whose relief was so palpable that his shoulders slumped almost to the ground.

"What in the hell happened to you guys?" came that same Texan drawl from Danny's right-hand side. He looked at the man who helped him up and saw from his uniform that he was a Sergeant in the USMC.

"Mate, you wouldn't believe us if we told you, but if you could get us back to Al Asad FOB, I'll give you all the tea in China!" Danny swore wholeheartedly.

"Not sure the Chinese would go for that deal, but I'll see what else we can work out," came the wry response. "We'll work on getting you a ride out of here, no way in hell will everyone fit into one Humvee! While we're waiting, maybe you boys can let us know what in the hell happened to you. Come on, Humvee's this way. We can at least get you out of the rain while we wait, find a bivi bag or something to help get you fellas all warmed up."

"We've escaped captivity," Mick informed the Marines with a sharp intake of breath as his helper inadvertently pulled on his injured side. "They'll definitely know that something went wrong during the transfer by now and they'll probably be looking for us. If they were anywhere nearby, they might have heard those shots," he warned them, all too aware how far-reaching the echoes of gunfire were.

"We'll set up a watch," the Sergeant reassured them.

Sergeant Cody Wicklow was in his late twenties and had been in the USMC for a few years. He was determined to make a career out of it and having few relations back in the States, he often found himself volunteering for as many tours as he was allowed. Understandably, he had seen a lot during his time in the deserts of both Afghanistan and Iraq, usually aware of what he was walking into thanks to good COs, but he had been wholly surprised to find the rag-tag group of men before him wandering the deserted back roads of rural Iraq in the depths of a rainy night.

It was clear that the men had been through hell and captivity would certainly explain the appalling conditions they were all in. Each and every man had cheekbones that he was sure were more pronounced than they should be, and their exhaustion and pain was clear as they each struggled to remain upright and place one foot in front of the other.

Corporal Rawson, the man who had made the introductions, looked like he should be the first to fall over should a stiff breeze come along, but Cody recognised the fiery glint of determination in the man's eyes and knew that even in the poor state the man was clearly in, he would soldier on until the very end.

The other Brit, Wallcroft, was in a similar state and obviously made of a similar mettle. The man was exhausted and in obvious pain, but he was trying his best not to show it.

He didn't know Steele, but the young US Army soldier had clearly impressed the two members of the UKSF, as had the civilian. He felt a rather ridiculous sense of patriotic pride, given that he had no ties to the young American whatsoever, but his fellow countryman had obviously acquitted himself well under dire circumstances.

The walk back to the Humvee was slow, and Wicklow's two accompanying Marines were cautiously looking into the darkness surrounding them, looking for any potential threats moving about in the shadows.

Once back at the vehicle, Wicklow informed Saifa and the remaining Marine that they had picked up some passengers and that they would need to wait for additional transport. Then he got on the net.

"Baseplate Actual, this is Hunter Two Actual, do you copy?"

"Copy Hunter Two Actual, this is Baseplate, reading you loud and clear. Send your traffic."

"Baseplate, we have picked up four friendlies and are in need of additional transport, how copy?"

"Solid copy, Hunter Two Actual. Require current co-ordinates."

"Wilco, standby," Wicklow offered as he looked to the laminated map sitting on the dashboard. Under torchlight, he found the rough co-ordinates for their location, "Ready to copy?"

"Roger, Hunter Two Actual. Ready to copy."

Wicklow reeled off their location and requested a Casevac, not sure just how long the injured men had been exposed to the elements and worried about the injured parties.

"Negative, Hunter Two Actual. Strong winds are at our location and as such, we won't be able to get a chopper in the air at this time. How copy?"

"Solid copy," Wicklow sighed. "Possible hostiles in the area and limited ammo. Three wounded soldiers and one civilian. ETA?"

"ETA is two hours by road. We'll send an escort with medical personnel and supplies. How copy?"

"Solid copy, Baseplate – two hours and an escort. Out."

"Watch your six, Hunter Two. Out."

"Ok guys," Cody shouted so the Marines watching the perimeter could hear him over the wind and rain. "Help is two hours out and there are possible hostiles in the area. We have limited ammo and thanks to our incompetent ass of an Ops. Chief, we don't _ever_ have enough batteries to power our NVGs or thermals at full capacity.

"Boone, Selker, you two will have the NVGs. The rest of us can switch on should the need arise. We need to maintain a full watch, so one of you take the east and south, and one of you take the west and north, concentrating on the road but taking care to check the surrounding area with your NVGs and thermals. Ellison, I want you up on the Fifty.

"Guys," he said, turning to the four weary and wounded men before him. "You can help me set up the Humvee then nestle down for the night. Hopefully, the next two hours will fly by problem free, but if we hit a snafu we're going to need your help when the shit hits the fan so get some rest while you can."

"We're not likely to sleep anyway," Steele offered. "We can take up a position, dig in, anything that needs doing."

"I'm sure you can, and like I said, you may well have to. If that _is_ the case, then I'll need you as alert as possible. Dig in if you're up for it, any extra protection might be worth the pain. However, don't start anything you can't finish – if the shit does hit the fan, you need to be able to at least get yourself out of the line of fire, if nothing else. I know you guys want to see this through to the end, but we need to be sensible about this."

"Understood," Mick sighed heavily, his Welsh accent thick with exhaustion and pain. Danny understood the weight behind that noise all too well. He, too, was not one to sit back and watch as others did his duty and he _hated_ being helpless. "Just let us know when we're needed. We're tired and hurt like hell, but we're not out for the count just yet."

" _Mick_?" came a surprised voice from inside the Humvee.

Danny looked questioningly at Mick, looking to place the voice, but it was clear that the Welshman's usual quick ability to place any name, face and voice had deserted him for the time being.

"Saifa, you know these men?" Wicklow asked.

That was when Danny saw the man who had got out of the back of the vehicle. Hassan Saifa worked with Military Intelligence, something that might sometimes appear to be a bit of a misnomer, but their intel had saved Danny's arse more than once and while he didn't always _like_ them, he _did_ respect their job.

Hassan, however, was an easy man to like. He was idealistic, determined that his job could steer away from the possibility of civilian casualties, despite the fact that he _must_ have seen civilian deaths were an undeniable reality of this war. He was used to great effect because of his clear ethnic origins and his perfect Arabic, but Hassan had not let that sully him the way many men in his position had done. He knew that his background made him one of the few men uniquely placed to elicit a reaction, good or bad, out of a great many suspects and accepted it as a necessity to do the job he was so eager and so proud to do.

Despite his sometimes oppressive job, Hassan tried to keep a positive outlook on life. Danny wasn't sure if that was his natural approach or one he had made a conscious effort to exude. He alternated between joining in with the lively banter that surrounded every military installation and the quiet reflection that his mentor, Sam Cooper, was renowned for. However, he was always one of the first to join a lively game of cards or an impromptu basketball game. He had played football, (taking all the Brits insisting that it _was_ football and _not_ soccer in good humour) and even attempted rugby, joining in with the ribbing as though he'd known the rest of the men for years.

Danny had gotten to know both Saifa and Cooper quite well, albeit mostly vicariously through Mick's own interactions with them. Danny knew better than most that Mick was not quick to trust, even if someone was wearing the same uniform as him, but for some reason his young Welsh friend had gravitated towards Cooper, and as Cooper's trust in Saifa was seemingly implicit, Mick had accepted him into their group with few questions asked.

"Hey Hassan," Mick offered the man a tired smile. He knew he must look pretty shocking, considering last time they had seen each other they had both been fit, healthy and full of energy as they chatted animatedly about a film they had just watched in the rec. tent.

"You look…er…" Hassan trailed off, unsure of how to continue. He watched as Wallcroft lifted up the Welshman's clothes to assess a bloody looking wound on his lower abdomen.

"Thanks, if it's any consolation, I feel a lot worse than I look," the sniper joked, some of his usual merriment lighting up his pale face.

"I've got a satellite phone," Hassan told them, brow furrowed with concern. "I'm supposed to keep it on me at all times so if I come across vital intel I can get it to those who need to know asap. I should probably call Sam, let him know we've found you – he's been really worried," he informed them grimly.

"We've got a lift on the way to take us back to Al Asad and he'll know about it all soon enough, so don't worry about it. Best to keep the channels open in case of an emergency," Mick replied as he batted away Danny's probing hands and started to unwind the camouflage netting tied up around the Humvee, using it to break up the outline of the vehicle. He could feel himself flagging and was desperate to keep a hold of his consciousness, even if he barely had the energy to stand upright.

Steele unstrapped a shovel from the back and started to dig a ranger grave near the rear of the vehicle, covered by the netting. Military Humvees were crowded and uncomfortable vehicles at the best of times, and there was no way they were going to be able to accommodate all five men inside, as well as the usual gear that was packed into ever available crook and cranny.

Apart from the four Marines who were all in position around the vehicle and on the fifty, there were the four recent escapees and the REMF that he'd never seen before – the guy had a sidearm but no rifle, so Ben assumed he was most likely in intel or some other such area of the military, given his solitary status with four Marines on the back roads of Iraq. With the Marines all outside and on watch, he felt as though he should do something useful, and a ranger grave added a little extra security around the bullet-magnet of a Humvee.

"Hold on mate, I'll give you a hand," Mick offered tiredly, hoping the physical exertion would starve off some of the more gruelling symptoms of advanced hypothermia.

Steele was about to object before he saw a subtle shake of the head from Wallcroft. Danny knew that Mick was in no fit state to dig any kind of hole, Lord knows _he_ certainly wasn't. Mick was still in pain and he had lost a fair amount of blood, but Danny had rechecked and re-bandaged the wound the moment they reached the Humvee and now he was increasingly concerned with the risks of hypothermia. Mick had stopped shivering long ago, despite the fact that he was still wet through and subjected to the cool night air of the desert landscape. He was becoming increasingly unfocused and it was clear the young Welshman was hanging on by strength of will alone.

Danny silently hoped that what little movement Mick _could_ manage would go some way to warming himself up. He had only the most basic training in field aid, but with the escort on its way and with medical personnel on-board, Danny wanted to ensure his friend survived the cold and the shock long enough to benefit from their training.

Eventually, two ranger graves were dug by the Humvee and underneath the netting. Steele had done most of the work and although they weren't as deep as normal, the compacted earth of the road made digging a little more difficult, they were there and offered additional shelter should the wrong side show up first. Steele wearily squared off the edges of the ranger graves, making them more rigid and secure.

Mick was slouching down in the back passenger seat, trying to find a comfortable position as his eyes were slowly closing of their own accord. He had not done much of the work, but enough to feel useful, and the physical exercise had brought some circulation back into his previously frozen extremities.

Danny was settled in front of his friend in the driver's seat, rubbing his hands together and nervously looking through the netting and into the surrounding darkness. Just as he resolved to try and get some sleep, he heard a shout.

"I got movement on my nine!" came a near panicked yell from the Marine watching the western road, Boone.

While Selker carried on watching his sector to the east, the other two Marines reacted as one and switched to their NVGs and thermals, desperately trying to identify the possible threat that Boone had shouted out.

"I glassed it," Wicklow confirmed. "It looks like a carrier bag or something caught in a bush."

"Are you sure?" Boone asked cautiously. "It could be someone using the bush as cover."

"I'm sure," Wicklow replied. "But keep your weapons on red-con one. I don't like being out in the open like this."

"With the winds and the rain, I'm picking up too much movement to track," Boone moaned. "I don't like this, Sarge!"

"The escort should be here in less than thirty minutes," Wicklow assured his men. "Try and hold it together, Corporal." He'd barely finished his sentence before the sound of gunfire erupted from the South. "Down! Get down!" he shouted even as he got into a defensive position and returned fire.

Hassan and Hauser were on the opposite side of the Humvee to the incoming fire and quickly bailed out to use the vehicle's frame as extra cover. Steele had dropped into one of the ranger graves, readying his weapon as he crawled into a position to return fire.

Danny had taken it all in subconsciously, as his focus was on his long-time friend and team-mate. Mick had settled in the back left passenger seat, and, having finally allowed exhaustion to overtake him, had just drifted off to sleep when the first shots were fired.

Like Danny, who was sitting in the driver's seat, he was exposed full on to the gunfire. He could hear the Fifty roaring above him as Ellison let loose and Mick felt several of the casings fall about alongside him.

He knew he was exposed, knew that he needed to move to cover. Diving over the seat to the other side would be difficult with all the gear and Ellison's legs blocking the way and there was only one other ranger grave that Mick sincerely hoped Danny would utilise.

He tried to get his body to move, but everything was so numb and his mind was so sluggish. He didn't _feel_ cold but he knew that he must be freezing – blood loss and over-exposure to the cold desert air had chilled him to his bones earlier and the brief stint of activity had not been enough to raise his low body temperature. He knew about the effects of hypothermia and shock, and understood that he was a prime candidate in his present condition but even aware, he couldn't seem to work around it.

Every excruciating pain that he had been forced to endure earlier during their arduous trek had dulled to a merciless throbbing. He tried to manoeuvre his fingers around the trigger of his gun, preparing to return fire but his usually nimble fingers fumbled over the safety.

He fought his way to his feet, clumsily trying to maintain his balance before he felt a powerful force hit him from the side and twist him down to the ground. He thought he heard his name being called but he couldn't seem to distinguish much in all the chaos, except for the fact that he had a heavy burden across his chest and even more difficulty breathing than normal.

He struggled beneath the weight, trying desperately to free himself. He could feel a warm liquid working its way down his body and silently cursed his luck – if Danny found out he had torn his stitches again, there would be hell to pay! He tried to worm his way out from the dead weight above him until a face finally broke through the haze.

When the shots around them finally died down, Mick was completely oblivious to it. Instead, he was focused on the closed eyes and slack face of his oldest friend, as Danny's bloody body lay prostrate above him.

* * *

** Sabra and Shatila ** **_– sites of a two-day massacre that potentially killed up to 3,500 civilians (the death count has never been agreed upon) of largely Palestinian and Lebanese Shiite Muslims in Beirut, carried out by a Lebanese Christian Militia called the Kataeb Party. A UN Commission in 1983 found that Israel bore the blame as they were occupying the land at the time and did nothing to stop the events of '82. A 1983 Israeli Commission found that Israeli military personnel were indirectly responsible, as they failed to stop the actions of the vengeful faction._ **

** PLO ** **_– the_ ** ** Palestinian Liberation Organisation ** **_. It was founded in 1964 with the aim of creating a free and independent Palestinian State. It has had Observer Status with the UN since 1974._ **

** M16 ** **– _the_ USMC's _basic assault rifle, with the_ M16A4 _the most common, although it is slowly being replaced with the_ M4 carbine _._**

** USMC ** **_–_ ** ** United States Marine Corps ** **_._ **

** Al Asad ** **_– a US_ ** ** FOB ** **_in the Al Anbar region of Iraq (a large region West of Baghdad) that opened in 2003 and closed in 2011. Not sure if a Joint Operation Taskforce was ever housed there, but it was in the general geographical region I imagined for this story and surely a_ ** **little _poetic licence is allowed in FF : )_**

** The Net ** **_– military slang for the radio._ ** ** 'Actual' ** **_indicates that the team leader himself is doing the talking._ ** ** 'Send your traffic' ** **_means that the other side should start sending their transmission._ ** ** 'Solid copy' ** **_simply means that they understand._ ** ** 'Wilco' ** **_means_ ** ** 'will  ** **comply' _and_ 'standby' _is pretty self-explanatory._ 'Ready to copy' _means that important instructions are about to be passed over the net that might need to be written down._ 'ETA' _is_ 'Estimated Time of Arrival' _._ 'Mikes' _can mean_ 'miles' _or_ 'minutes' _._ 'Out' _is used to signify an end to the conversation and that no reply is expected._**

** Ops. Chief ** **_– short for_ ** ** Operations Chief ** **_. They assist in gathering, interpreting and disseminating any and all operational information necessary for the success of the mission. Sometimes, ensuring the men have the necessary equipment can be listed as an additional duty._ **

** NVGs ** **_–_ ** ** Night Vision Goggles ** **_._ **

** Full watch ** **_– simply means that all men will be on watch duty._ **

** Snafu ** **_– stands for_ ** ** 'situation normal, all fucked up' ** **_._ **

** Ranger Grave ** **_– sleeping holes dug into the earth that protect the soldiers from shrapnel and bullets alike to a certain degree._ **

" **I glassed it"** **_– means that they have caught sight of the object through their rifle scope or their binoculars._ **

** Red-Con One ** **_– a term used to denote that a loaded weapon should have a round in its chamber, but with the safety still on._ **

** Sarge ** **_– a common nickname for_ ** ** Sergeant ** **_._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_I understand that the subject matter in this chapter related to the massacre in Lebanon could be seen as controversial but I have stuck to the facts, as agreed upon by the UN and several investigative commissions that were run inside the state of Israel. However, there is still a lot of resentment over the incident and there are still facts that no one can seem to agree on, the death count not least._ **
> 
> **_If you are interested in the history, aside from reading up on it, I heartily recommend 'Waltz with Bashir', an animated film based on an Israeli soldier who was involved in the '82 war and can't remember anything from that period – it covers his journey as he tries to remember and is incredibly well done and the self-recriminations are honest and contemplative, and in no way try to excuse what happened, and indeed, tries to reconcile his actions with his basic moral principles._ **
> 
> **_I also apologise to anyone who was upset with the references to 9/11. I meant no disrespect. The events of that day have a direct correlation to the invasion of both Afghanistan and Iraq and were of such a dramatic nature that I felt they were fully capable of turning a man (Hassan) away from beliefs he previously held as indisputable. It seemed a natural and believable route to take._ **


	9. Chapter 9

His mind was as numb as his body, unable to fully process what was before his very eyes. He could only stare, aware that he should be feeling _something_ , whether it be physical or emotional, but he was hazily conscious of his utter disorientation. He was looking into the bloody face of his best friend and not doing a damn thing about it.

"Jesus fucking Christ!" came a loud exclamation from somewhere to the side. He thought someone was trying to talk to him and Mick tried to turn his head to try and ascertain who was speaking, what they were saying, but he found he didn't even have the energy for that. He tried to figure out why he was feeling so sluggish, why he was so tired and unfocused, but he couldn't find an answer. He could only stare at his friend's battered face and closed eyes.

"What are their names again?" Sergeant Cody Wicklow demanded of one of the other two former captives. He gently rolled the man off his friend and pulled him over to one side, where he instructed Boone and the civilian to do what they could for him. He turned back to the other man and looked to the young American soldier for an answer.

"Danny Wallcroft and Mick Rawson," Steele replied, swallowing back his own volatile emotions. They had all been through so much and they had come so close to being clear and free only for five minutes of gunfire to drag them all back to hell.

Danny wasn't moving, and Ben could see the brightness of the blood even in the darkness of the early morning hours. It could be that the exhaustion coupled with shock and the blood loss had caused him to finally give in and accept the bliss of unconsciousness, but Danny was a fighter and the idea of the man actually giving into the calling oblivion didn't sit right with Ben.

Mick wasn't moving either, even though his eyes were open. However, Ben was still freaking out that neither of the men would make it – Danny was losing blood at a hell of a rate and Mick was increasingly unresponsive.

His glassy stare as he took in the visage of his best friend was enough to inform Steele that the man was in a bad way. He'd seen the way the two men had fiercely looked out for each other through five weeks of hell. Mick had taken on a lot of damage trying to protect his friend and now he wasn't even batting an eyelid.

He knew that Rawson was exhausted and in pain. He knew that he was suffering through the effects of being shot, of the crash and of the lingering pain from his time with Fahim. He had even recognised the effects of hypothermia setting in and he knew that every minute Rawson was not receiving medical treatment he was a further step away from survival.

"His pulse is rapid, weak and very thready, and his skin is fucking freezing!" Wicklow assessed Mick as Hauser and Boone continued to help Danny, doing what they could to stop the bleeding by packing the wound with Celox gauze.

"We've been caught in this rain since it started, so we're all pretty cold," Ben offered by way of explanation, feeling more than a little panicked about his friend’s condition. "He's also been through a hell of a lot more than the rest of us. He was shot about 48 hours ago..."

"Shot?" Wicklow asked incredulously. No one had said anything about being shot!

"Hauser patched him up as best he could after it happened and he's been checking Mick over off and on these past two days. We went as slowly as we dared but I don't know what kind of damage all that walking might have caused, but we _had_ to move!” he defended their actions. “We’d _all_ be dead if we stayed. Danny rechecked the bandage when we first got to the Humvee - it's not like we can ask him for a sit-rep but he _did_ let Mick dig a little. I think Danny was hoping Mick would warm up a little with the exercise but…" he shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"Shit!" Wicklow sighed heavily as he wiped a hand across his face, fiercely scrubbing at his eyes. Hypovolemic shock and hypothermia were not things he could adequately handle in the field. He needed that escort with its medical personnel and he needed it two hours ago.

He looked over at the two men treating the other soldier, Danny. It wasn't looking good there either. Hauser was desperately trying to stem the blood-loss and Boone was unsuccessfully trying to rouse his patient back into consciousness. Cody thought it would probably be better to leave the man pain-free in his oblivion, but knew that there was a mental correlation between surviving with being awake and responsive.

He didn't know what more they could do. It seemed unfair that the two men had endured so much only to have their escape snatched away from them at the last minute and end in gunfire and bloodshed. Just then, the net came alive with static before a much-awaited voice came through.

"Hunter Two Actual, this is Viking Actual. We are five mikes from your position, coming in from the East. How copy?"

Wicklow briefly closed his eyes in relief, sending a quick thanks skywards before reaching for the radio.

"Solid copy, Viking Actual. We're in urgent need of a Corpsman – two men down. Hostiles _are_ in the area and have already engaged once, coming from the South, South-West. Keep your eyes open and watch your six. Out."

"Roger, Hunter Two. Thanks for the heads up. Be with you soon. Out."

"We've got friendlies on the road, coming in from the East," he informed Ellison and Selker who were still warily watching their sectors, weapons at the ready. "Five minutes out, so watch your fire in that sector."

Soon enough, he heard the rumble of a convoy of vehicles and he visibly sagged with relief. The four Marines were supposed to have had an easy time of it, taking Saifa up into the remote hills of Al Anbar to meet with an informant before returning to base under the cover of night. Now they had suffered through an attack and had two men hanging onto their lives by a thread. He couldn't wait until the moment he could fall onto his rack and call an end to the day.

"Rawson?" he called, looking at the younger man lying down on the dirt. His face was streaked with dried blood and his half-lidded eyes were full of confusion and pain as fatigue, blood-loss, hypothermia and who knew what else tried to pull him under and into oblivion. There was no visible sign that he had heard the Sergeant.

"Mick?" he tried, gently cupping the man's face so they were looking directly at each other. Cody had hoped that there would be some sort of reaction to the physical contact, but the man barely even battered an eyelid.

Wicklow's hopes for the Corporal making it back to base alive were fast depleting. It was clear that the shock was taking a real toll on him – his breathing was becoming shallower and his skin colder as the full effects of vasoconstriction came into force.

He had lifted the makeshift poncho to take a look at the bullet wound as soon as he was made aware of the injury. It was still bandaged tightly from Wallcroft's last inspection, but he could just make out the inflamed skin around the edges of the bandages and took that to be a clear sign that infection was setting in. The _one_ good thing about the hypothermia and the gradual onset of hypovolemic shock was that as his circulatory system had slowed down, his blood-loss would have been reduced, too. Perhaps that was why he had been able to hang on for so long.

He had also taken note of the mass of cuts and bruises and burns that littered Mick's torso and, he suspected, the rest of his body. Wicklow knew that the men had been mistreated, he had seen it in their faces and heard it in the tone of their voices, but to have the physical evidence of it revealed like that had been a shock to the system, nonetheless.

Cody was aware of a person settling in beside him as they started assessing the British Corporal and he was more than ready to leave someone else in charge. The first time he went out as a Sergeant, with a whole team looking to _him_ , the anxiety he felt over his ability to bring everyone home safe and sound had been almost crippling in its intensity, but he had held it together and been successful so far in his responsibilities.

The idea of being responsible for someone in any _medical_ sense of the word left a bitter taste in his mouth. He would be the first to head into a firefight, he would defuse an IED and hand out food supplies to a violently desperate local populace, but the very thought of having someone's life in his non-medically capable hands was almost paralyzing.

He had Mick's blood, literally, on his hands and he had spent far too long talking to an unresponsive man with no real clue as to what he should be doing. He had done a basic course on field medicine during his early years – applying a tourniquet and the like, but there was _nothing_ he could do to help Wallcroft or Rawson and he had never felt so impotent, so utterly useless. It was a high stakes game and he felt like he'd been playing blind from the start, and what was worse, he feared that he was going to lose.

He sat back and watched as the Corpsman did what he could to stabilise the young Corporal before turning to check on his team. He knew that none of them had been hit - it had been the first thing he'd checked on. But that didn't mean they were ok. He was twenty-eight but his youngest soldier, Selker, was just eighteen. The young Private had been nothing but composed throughout the whole fracas, but Cody was always going to worry about how his team, especially the newbie, was coping.

He turned back and looked at Rawson and Wallcroft and wondered how old they were - the Corporals barely looked to be in their twenties, certainly not old enough to have endured so much. He sent a quick prayer skywards for both British soldiers before getting to his feet and organising his men. He still had a mission to complete and that wouldn't happen until Hassan Saifa was tucked up safe and sound in his billet.

* * *

Sam Cooper had been attempting to sleep, but his anxiety over Hassan's first solo interrogation and the fact that he was late returning was keeping him from a peaceful slumber.

Sam was due to return to the States in less than a week whereas Hassan still had another month to get through. Sam didn't much relish the idea of leaving the younger man behind but he knew that Hassan was capable and that his pride would be dented if Sam stayed on, incorrectly taking Sam's worries to be about his capability rather than his mortality.

After tossing and turning he thought _'the hell with it'_ , and went to the mess tent in search of coffee – it was pretty awful at the best of times and it was most likely cold, but the caffeine was needed if sleep was going to be denied.

"Hey Perkins," he greeted one of the soldiers he often saw around the base. They weren't friends, but they comfortably exchanged a few words every now and then in the dead of night when neither one of them could find any respite in their sleep. "Do you know what all that noise was about earlier?" he asked as he poured himself a cup of coffee. He'd been roused from a restless slumber by the rumble of several engines and after they had left the base he'd started to worry that perhaps it was something to do with why Hassan was late back.

"No idea, but I know they took three medics with them," Perkins replied. "That can _never_ be a good sign!"

"No," Sam sighed. "Maybe with all the wind and the rain something happened in one of the nearby settlements," he offered tentatively. It was not unheard of – many a time, both in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers had been utilised to help in the rescue efforts of flash-floods, earthquakes, landslides and the like. However, his gut told him that wasn't the case.

The winds were strong enough to ground most of the choppers, but while the rain was cold and had lasted for several hours, it was not particularly heavy, nor had there been enough of it to induce a landslide. They'd suffered though a few rainstorms over the past couple of weeks and the ground had softened slightly, making flash-floods less likely. And he hadn't felt any tremors that told of a nearby earthquake.

He felt for his rosary beads and gently massaged them, as he often did when he sought to comfort himself. He whispered a quick prayer for the safe return of his friend, unable to fathom the idea of Hassan coming to any harm.

He sat down at one of the long tables and cuddled his coffee cup. It wasn't hot, but it wasn't cold either, and the chilly desert air had him looking for any degree of warmth he could find. He was about half way through, trying desperately not to focus on the _'what ifs'_ where Hassan was concerned when he saw Briggs rush into the mess tent and look around, an anxious expression on his face. He caught sight of Sam and made his way over.

"Hey Cooper," he greeted the man with little enthusiasm. "I don't suppose you've seen Fealey around, have you?"

Adam Fealey was a Captain in the Paras and Sam knew him as Mick and Danny's immediate CO. He was, like Mick, a Welshman, although he hailed from the North of the country, in the heart of Snowdonia. Mick had always seemed to get on very well with his Captain, and Sam knew the younger man had a lot of respect for Fealey and the way he looked after his men.

"No, sorry. I haven't seen him since lunch," Sam informed the officer. "Are you ok? Do you need some coffee? It's still warm and _almost_ bearable."

"I'm fine, but thanks," Briggs replied with a frown. He stood staring at Sam for a good two minutes, evaluating and assessing and clearly looking for something, but Sam had no idea what, exactly, that was. Apparently, whatever it was, Briggs found it and sat down across from the interrogator with a heavy sigh.

"We got a distress call from Wicklow," Briggs told him, all too aware that Cooper would recognise that name as belonging to the Marine Sergeant in charge of keeping Saifa safe and sound. "They found four friendlies on the road to Al Halaba and requested an immediate Casevac, but obviously with the Shamal Winds being what they are we couldn't get a chopper in the air, so we sent along an armed escort with some medics to do what they could and bring them back to base for further medical treatment.

"Sam," Briggs said quietly, leaning forward and staring at the interrogator in earnest. "The escort arrived at the rendezvous about ten minutes ago. Rawson and Wallcroft are among the wounded."

"What?" Sam asked in a daze. He, like many others, had given up the missing men for dead as time passed with no signs of their survival. Oh, he'd _hoped_ they were alive, but the more rational, experienced side of his brain was silently and unforgivingly telling him that it was less than likely.

After discovering Anderson's body and finding evidence that hinted towards the sadistic nature of the men that held them, Sam knew that their chances of survival had taken a serious nose-dive. All too often, he had seen the victims of sadists throughout his career, and he understood the tragic results that particular dark side of human nature could create.

"It's not looking good. Wallcroft's got a chest wound. They're hoping it missed the lungs altogether, although they won't know for sure until they can get him properly evaluated, but they're worried about the blood-loss.

"Mick has a bullet wound in the abdominal cavity and there are signs that an infection has set in. He's suffering from hypovolemic shock and hypothermia. He's nonresponsive. It doesn't look good, Sam," the officer repeated sadly.

Briggs was well aware of the fact that he was a hard man to know, preferring to keep his home life far away from the trials and tribulations of the military. However, he cared greatly for the men under his command. Being a high-ranking officer of the UKSF, he had spent many a year watching FNGs come in without a clue, and leave as some of the best trained soldiers in the world.

He had watched Rawson and Wallcroft with great curiosity. It was always interesting when men as young as those two made it into the UKSF. Danny was only just twenty-two and Mick had turned twenty not long before his captivity. The two men were excellent soldiers and Briggs knew it was only a matter of time until they both tried for Selection.

Of course, that was before. That was when they were fit and healthy and happy and _whole_. He wasn't sure what would happen to the two men should they survive, wasn't sure what they had endured during their five missing weeks, wasn't sure he _wanted_ to know.

Danny Wallcroft was a stalwart soldier, always ready and able to go that extra mile. He was a loyal friend and often kept Mick's more impulsive behaviour in check. He was patient and kind and always willing to help out the FNGs, even as his sense of humour demanded merciless teasing. He'd quickly earned the respect of his fellow members of the UKSF and his presence was greatly missed.

Mick Rawson was slightly more charismatic than his spotter friend, but he also seemed more wary about people in general, despite his natural charm. He was only twenty, but he was old before his years in so many ways that even the hardened elite of the SAS looked at him as an equal and not some FNG to be put in his place. Briggs knew the rough details of his personnel file, knew about the tragedy of his childhood, knew that he likely still suffered through the results of it all. However, the man was the best damn sniper he had ever seen and a determined soldier that had never failed to see an op. successfully through to the end.

Both Rawson and Wallcroft had been taken as they were risking their lives overseeing an evacuation of the wounded from an ambush site. Their bravery was no less than Briggs had come to expect from the two young soldiers, he only wished that they hadn't paid such a high price for their courage.

"I need to find Fealey," Briggs said as he reluctantly got to his feet. He hated to be the bearer of bad news. "He's going to want to know about this asap and I'd rather he heard about this directly than from some of the squaddies gossiping about it like a bunch of teenaged girls. I'm sorry, Sam," he offered as he placed a hand on the other man's shoulder as a gesture of comfort. "With a bit of luck, it might not be as bad as it sounds, but I don't want you to get your hopes up. I know you were friends."

Sam barely registered the other man leaving as he thought back on Briggs's words. " _Are_ friends," he reaffirmed quietly to himself. "We _are_ friends."

* * *

Danny felt like he was suffocating. Every breath he drew in hurt and no matter how deeply he breathed, how hard he tried to breathe through the pain, it felt like he couldn't draw in enough oxygen.

"Danny, you need to calm down!" came a soothing voice from above him. He tried to focus on the face that hovered above him, tried to concentrate on the steady flow of words. His vision kept on blurring and refocusing and it was making him nauseous. His throat felt sore and he wondered if that was why he was having such difficulty drawing in breath.

"Mick?" he said, his voice too hoarse to come out in anything other than a whisper. He tried to look around and see who else was around, but he couldn't see any sign of his friend.

"Corporal Rawson is in another vehicle. He's got a Corpsman looking after him, but right now, you need to let us help you," he was firmly told. "You're not going to do your friend any good by working yourself up like this."

He felt hands probing at his upper chest, pressing down and sending shooting pains through him. He tried to move, tried to batter the hands away from him, but he could barely feel his arms, let alone move them.

"Mick?" he shouted out louder this time, panic setting in. He remembered the way his friend had swayed, oblivious to the dangers surrounding him, unable to take himself to cover. He remembered feeling scared about the glassy look in Mick's eyes and the complete lack of a response as Danny had shouted at him, warning him to get down. He remembered tackling his best friend to the ground and the pain that shot through him as they hit the earth with a heavy thud. The rest was a terrifying blank.

"Mick?" he called out again, desperate to hear his friend's Welsh lilt telling him to stop acting like a bloody twat, that he was being unnecessarily dramatic – words of gentle mockery were second nature to them both when things got rough and the banter usually helped to calm themselves down.

But this time there was no reply. No amused smirk as Mick silently laughed at him, no raised eyebrows with a sarcastic comment ready to tell Danny how it really was. And that silence terrified him. He struggled more, desperate to find his friend.

"Shit, we're going to need to sedate him! He carries on moving about like this and no amount of Celox is going to help him. Dose him, now!"

"No!" Danny struggled against the hands that held him down. "Mick!" he called out in desperation. His friend was always there, always watching his six. Where was he now? What was going on?

He felt a small prick near the crook of his arm and as the sedative dragged him towards oblivion, the last haunting image that danced its way through his mind was of Mick, covered in mud and blood, seconds away from collapse and completely unaware of the immediate danger surrounding him.

* * *

"Breath sounds are _still_ becoming shallower!" Malcolm Smith muttered to himself savagely. His patient, Corporal Rawson, Michael, blood type O- according to his dog-tags, was barely hanging on. They weren't far out from Al Asad FOB, but he wasn't convinced that the medical tent had the necessary equipment to save his life, and with the Shamal Winds grounding the choppers, a Casevac to a better equipped hospital was unlikely to happen until the worst of it had died down, and Rawson might not have that kind of time to spare.

He'd removed the bandage and tried to clean the wound as best as he could before packing it with Celox gauze in an effort to stem the blood-loss. There was little he could do about the infection until he had access to heavy-duty antibiotics. With the major injury seen to, Mal turned his attention to the rest. There was so much to take care of that he didn't even know where to start.

When he'd rolled Rawson to check on the bullet's exit wound he saw the ugly scar that ran jagged across his shoulder. It was clear that the wound was at least a few weeks old and had received very crude treatment. He could make out some burn scars that indicated the wound had been cauterised. Mal had to be content that it was, at least, clean, as if infection had been sealed into the wound then Rawson would already have died from sceptic shock.

His chest was a mass of cuts and bruises and at least four of his ribs were broken. There were some superficial burn marks on one side of his chest that Mal could only think were electrical burns. He'd seen them before and far worse than the ones Rawson was sporting, but with the effects of shock already affecting his heartbeat, the added potential of electrocution-caused arrhythmia could prove fatal.

There was a lot of bruising, especially around the abdominal region. Mal was particularly worried by the discolouration and rigidity surrounding his liver and could only hope that there was no internal bleeding.

There was quite a knot on the side of his head, indicating head trauma, and once again, Mal could only pray that there was no serious internal bleeding. There was no blood leaking from his ears or nose, and more importantly, no cerebrospinal fluid either, so a traumatic head injury was looking unlikely. Nonetheless, the effects of a concussion would certainly make getting a response out of the injured man all the more difficult.

Mal shone his torch into Rawson's eyes once again, measuring the pupils and their responses when he patient moaned and tried to turn his head away from the offending light.

"Corporal Rawson?" he asked, demanding a response. When the young soldier turned his head towards him, Mal smiled. "Welcome back. I'm HM2 Malcolm Smith, but everyone calls me, Mal. I am...hey, hey, look at me!" he ordered the young Corporal as he felt the man's attention waning. "I _am_ going to get you home," he promised as he pushed through some fluids. "But to do that, I'm going to need your help. Have you got any family? Who have you got waiting for you back home, Michael?" he asked once he saw Rawson nod.

"Sister," Mick croaked out. "Jenna." His voice hurt and it had never taken so much effort to get so few words out. He was more awake than he had been but he was also more confused than ever. He looked around trying to find Danny.

"Well now, we can't leave your sister all alone, so I'm going to need you to fight. You hold on, you hear me Michael? We're almost as the FOB and then you're going to have to cooperate while the docs there sort you out, then we can think about getting you back home to Jenna."

"Danny?" he asked hoarsely.

"Danny?" Mal asked, not sure what he was being asked. "Who's Danny? He your brother?"

"Corporal Daniel Wallcroft," Ben Steele informed him from the front of the truck. "He's in the other vehicle."

"Your friend is in the truck in front of us," Mal told Mick. "He's got two Corpsmen working on him, and he's going to be just fine." He wasn't at all convinced by his own lie, but he didn't want his patient working himself into distress over something he could do nothing about. There was no certainty that Rawson would survive, but he _was_ hanging on and Mal didn't want to be the one to upset that tenacious hold on life.

"Tired," Mick mumbled as he turned his head to the side. He wanted to sleep - he was so tired that he could barely keep his eyes open but he wanted to see Danny. He needed to see his friend with his own two eyes. He hoped that the next time he saw Danny, it would erase the terrible image of his friend's blood-smeared, lifeless face.

* * *

Sam ran to the medical tent the moment he heard the dull roar of engines. He needed to see for himself that Hassan was ok, and he desperately wanted to see Mick and Danny, alive and whole, but terrified to find that it was too late. He had given them up for dead and hoped that they had not gone through so much only to die in a makeshift medical tent in the middle of the Iraqi desert.

Hassan jumped out of the first vehicle that arrived, and while he caught sight of Cooper, he only offered a quick nod before making his way to the two trucks that had pulled up behind Wicklow's Humvee. Medical personnel poured out of the tent with stretchers and split in two groups, one headed to each truck.

Sam went to the first one and saw Danny carefully being manoeuvred onto a fresh stretcher. Wallcroft was unconscious and his left chest was covered in blood. He was so pale and so much thinner than when Sam had last seen him. Under all the blood, his chest was a mass of bruises and Sam could tell that the young man had truly suffered during his missing five weeks.

The medical personnel hurried to get him into the tent, talking about blood-loss and possible surgery. Sam didn't think it looked good, but at the same time, Danny looked a lot better than some of the images his frantic mind had conjured up.

The first thing he noticed when he saw Mick was that his eyes were open and Sam let himself visibly relax with sheer relief that his friend was ok. Then he let his eyes take in the rest of him and felt his anxiety shoot through the roof.

While Danny had obviously endured much of the same treatment as Mick, he'd clearly not been subjected to the same level of severity as the young sniper. Mick was a mess. There was no way to sugar-coat his condition. His eyes were open, certainly, but judging by the glassy look and drooping eyes, he was hanging onto consciousness by a thread.

He had a thick bandage wrapped around his abdomen and his chest was a mottled mix of colour. Old bruises were overlaid with new ones, and there were angry red blotches dotted across his body that indicated exactly what sort of treatment he'd received at the hands of his captors. There were rope burns around his wrists and hand-shaped bruises across his shoulders as he'd clearly been forcibly held down and subjected to God only knows what sort of torture.

His breathing was so shallow, Sam could barely see any signs of life and as the medical personnel crowded round Mick and blocked him from view, Sam could only watch on helplessly and hope for the best.

* * *

** Corpsmen ** **_– the_ ** ** USMC ** **_rarely refer to medics as medics but as_ ** ** Corpsmen ** **_._ **

** Celox Gauze ** **_– used by both the UK and US Military (and many more worldwide) it is a dense, haemostatic gauze used to pack bleeding wounds._ **

** Sit-Rep ** **_–_ ** ** Situation Report ** **_._ **

** Rack ** **_– military slang for a bed._ **

** Billet ** **_– military slang for living quarters._ **

** Selection ** **_– name given to the SAS training programme. It tests soldiers and their abilities to see if they have what it takes to become a member of the SAS. It is one of the most gruelling in the world and has many different stages - this will be explored later in the story._ **

** HM2 ** **_–_ ** ** Hospital Corpsman Second Class ** **_(E-5 paygrade) -_ ** ** USMC ** **_rank for a medic._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_I am in no way shape or form a medical professional so please feel free to ignore any and all medical inaccuracies you come across - I'm sure plenty slipped through the net despite my research!_ **


	10. Chapter 10

Sam was exhausted. He'd been asked to extend his tour by two weeks out in Iraq, as his replacement had been delayed with a family emergency. As much as he had wanted to say _'no'_ he'd felt duty-bound, both to his job _and_ to Hassan, to accept. Finally, three weeks after Mick Rawson and Danny Wallcroft had been brought back to base, bleeding, barely breathing and fading fast, Sam was going to find out more than just _'they're alive'_.

He had suffered through a long and uncomfortable ride in a Humvee to Baghdad before an even longer and more uncomfortable ride in a crowded military plane that was half laden with troops, half with cargo, to Ramstein Air Base. From there, he'd made his way back into the civilian world and headed to the nearest airport in Saarbrücken and took the first flight he could find to London. In London, he'd struggled through the chaos of the Tube on an early Saturday evening before fighting his way to King's Cross Train Station and securing a seat on the next train to Peterborough. It took just under one hour by train and a fifteen-minute taxi ride before finally, _finally_ , he reached his location.

Peterborough City Hospital was much like any other - a huge block of a building, plenty of glass and a plethora of signs ending in -ology. It was a civilian hospital with a MOD Hospital Unit that both Mick and Danny had been transferred to once their medical status had changed to _'stable'_ , freeing up their beds for the more urgent cases back in Woolwich.

Life went on in the surrounding area. There were some young men out for the night, walking in large, loud groups towards the pubs and bars that were dotted around the area. There was a middle-aged couple walking by, laden with shopping bags and a young girl of five clinging to her father's shoulders and chattering away merrily. There was also a slow but steady stream of visitors coming to and from the hospital, and Sam could only hope that he'd arrived in time for evening visiting hours.

When Mick and Danny had arrived back at Al Asad FOB, they were in a terrible state. Friends who had heard about their return had milled about together outside the medical tent and it was a testament to both their characters that Sam had found himself pacing alongside half the members of the UKSF, the Joint Operations Taskforce and many more beside. As units kept on returning from patrol or heading out, the names and faces of those waiting for news changed, but the sheer volume of people silently supporting their fallen comrades remained high.

The mood of the crowd had been very sombre, with the severity of their friends' injuries hanging over them all like a black cloud. Many of the men had long since given up hope of ever seeing their friends return to them alive and well, the rumours of Anderson's drawn-out and painful death having long ago done the rounds in Al Asad and the neighbouring FOBs. Torture was not a foreign concept to the men and women of the military and they had all expected the missing men to have endured something of it. The confirmation, however, was anything but gratifying, as their two friends fought against the odds to survive.

The only member of non-medical personnel who was granted admittance was Captain Adam Fealey, Mick and Danny's immediate OC. He had done his best to understand the medical jargon being thrown at him by frantic military doctors before relaying the information to the men and women waiting outside, but it was clear to everyone that the situation had taken a toll on the man.

Fealey was widely respected, and not just inside his own unit. With the Brass it came down to Fealey's success rate. With the soldiers under his command, it was the _man_ they followed, rather than the rank, as he had more than proven himself to them long ago. While Fealey made it clear that rank and order were to be obeyed and respected, he was not so rigorous in ensuring it was carried out in the field as other OC's, believing that the heat of battle often required some flexibility on the matter.

Fealey was also a very open, friendly man. Some might think he had made a mistake, taking on so many of the soldiers who served under him as friends, blurring the lines of traditional military formality somewhat. However, it was obvious to most that his open and easy manner, his quiet and wry sense of humour and his readiness to help the men under his command through almost any circumstances had helped to form an incredibly tight-knit unit. It was a unit that was thoroughly comfortable together both on and off the field of combat, working well as a team through the physical aspects of war _and_ the psychological demands. Most of all, it was a unit that trusted their OC through Hell and high-water.

Sam knew both Mick and Danny held their Captain in the highest regard and trusted him implicitly. They followed his orders to the letter, never hesitating or questioning the reasons behind them, not through blind trust but by having long ago learnt that the man was as reliable as they came.

Mick hadn't said much about why he trusted the man so unreservedly, but the fact that Fealey had earned it from the wary young Welshman said more than enough for Sam. Danny had been a little more frank about the incident, citing a gross abuse of power from a senior officer and that it was Fealey's reaction to the situation that had forever earned their loyalty. Sam was still missing the finer details, but he imagined a seasoned and well-respected Captain standing up for a lowly Corporal against a man of superior rank would have had quite the impact on the young Welshman, who Sam was sure had not had very many people stand up for him over the years.

He didn't know what it was about Mick that made Sam feel so protective him, but Sam could only assume it had something to do with the way the younger man seemed to approach life. Mick could grin as wide as the Cheshire Cat, but Sam had noticed the careful way he guarded himself and his emotions, even in times of levity the man could be remarkably close-mouthed. Whenever personal stories were shared, as was wont to happen with so many people so far from home and their loved ones, Mick would smile and joke along with the rest of them, but he always managed to avoid sharing any stories of his own through clever redirections. Hell, Sam and Danny were two of the few people who even _knew_ about Jenna!

Despite being in the military, it was clear that respect of authority figures was not something that came naturally to Mick. Sam had heard several stories, via Danny and many others, that cited occasions when Mick's reluctance to follow an OC's orders blindly had led the young Welshman into all sorts of trouble. Thankfully, that had ended with Fealey.

However, Mick's reluctance to trust anyone, even with the most basic facts about himself, indicated more than just a typically unhappy childhood, and while Sam was more than curious and could probably dig up the truth with the help of his old contacts, he couldn't fathom betraying Mick's trust like that, all too aware that he would not be given a chance to earn it back from the Welshman.

The moment the Shamal Winds had died down enough for a Casevac by air, both men had been airlifted to Baghdad before being loaded onto a C-17 Globemaster, fitted out as a flying medical centre. The plane was responsible for transporting the most severe casualties of the wars in both Afghanistan and Iraq, and was kitted out with life-support machines and a talented crew. The planes had helped save many lives, and the equipment and the experience on-board were elements that had been crucial for the survival of both of his friends.

After a frantic six hours of trying to keep them alive and as stable as possible, they were met on the tarmac by several ambulances, before being transferred to Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Woolwich. After that, any news about them had all but died down.

Only a few days after Rawson and Wallcroft touched down in the UK, the Joint Special Operations Taskforce conducted a full-scale attack on the AQI faction in Al Halaba, hoping to stem the faction's increasing attacks in the region. Unfortunately, that meant that Sam's only tangible link to Mick and Danny, via Briggs and Fealey, was lost as the fighting in the surrounding region kept Al Asad FOB as empty as it had ever been.

It had taken a fair bit of asking around the base and calling in favours before being directed to Peterborough, but that had been three days ago and there had been no knowledge on their status other than _'stable'_ , a word that he was both beyond relieved to hear, and yet so very ungrateful for, given how much leeway that single word allowed for.

With a deep breath, Sam returned his attention to the building in front of him. He had travelled so far and for so long, there was no point putting off the reason behind his visit. With a rather reluctant first step, he started to walk towards the entrance, completely unsure of what awaited him on the other side.

* * *

Mick was bored - there was no other word for it and yet _'bored'_ was so wholly inadequate. He hated hospitals…with a passion. He supposed there were not many people who _were_ actual fans of the institutions - the pain and the smell and all the terrible connotations usually related to a hospital ensured that. However, it was far more than feelings of unease for Mick - his very worst memories of his very worst day were inextricably linked to the sterile environment of a busy hospital in Swansea.

Before his parents died, he had only ever been in hospital once that he could recall. He and a friend from the same street had decided that trees were meant for climbing and found the perfect oak, fully laden with acorns, at the nearby park. The climb had been far easier than he had expected, and unlike Owen, who was a whole two years older than him, he managed to climb almost to the top. Unfortunately, he had not taken the descent into account - landing awkwardly, using his outstretched arms to stop himself from face-planting right into the ground, a loud snap indicated the very moment his arm gave way to pressure and broke.

He missed two whole days of school and didn't have to do any writing for almost four weeks. All of his friends signed his cast and drew pictures on the once white plaster. His little sister, Jenna, looked at him in awe, as though his injuries came from slaying dragons and not from a serious lack of judgement. His dad took him to see Swansea City just lose out to arch rivals, Cardiff. His mum kept him supplied with ice-pops, the blue ones, to tide him over when it hurt or itched or he got frustrated with not being able to play with his friends. All in all, his memories of that injury were too well entwined with the good that followed.

But the next time he was in a hospital, he was all alone. He had no parents to hold him and comfort him, or bribe him with trips to the football and sugary snacks chock full of preservatives and additives. No little sister to stare in awe at his latest battle wounds. No friends to gather round and distract him from the crushing reality he found himself in.

He remembered the doctors and nurses and the way they tiptoed around him, afraid that the slightest misstep would cause him to shatter into a million pieces. He remembered the police, the questions they asked and the _way_ they asked, some with more tact than others but always with that look, the one that said they were cornering a wild animal that could either bolt or bite at any second. He remembered the social workers and the way they tried to be his best friend, calling him _'son'_ and _'sweetheart'_ in hushed, almost reverent tones as they tried so hard to reassure him, to make him feel safe once more. He remembered that not one of them would give him a straight answer about Jenna.

He also vividly remembered the hospital, because it had been far better, _easier_ to focus on the sights and smells that surrounded him than to even consider thinking about what had happened that terrible night or what would happen to him in the future.

It was much easier to think about the smell of disinfectant rather than remember that of fresh blood and salty tears. It was easier to hear the steady beeps belonging to the multitude of machines than reimagine the bone-chilling screams of his mother and older sister. It was easier to watch a newly disabled man slowly make his way down the corridor with a quiet determination on his face than recall the terrified visage of Jenna, huddled under the bed with her hands firmly pressed against her ears, crying out desperately, futilely for their mother.

It was easier to forget about the outside world and Christmas and families and hope in the white, sterile environment of the hospital, where the only signs of Christmas were a few sorry looking strands of tinsel dotted about the place.

Foster-care saw his last remaining family torn away from him, a cute six year old girl a far more appealing prospective adoptee than a traumatised ten year old. Foster-care also saw a few return trips to the hospital. A few broken bones, the odd concussion and a ruptured kidney later, and he had wanted to run far away, to leave and never look back. He probably would have headed for the hills long before then if it hadn't been for Jenna and the odd good placement.

While he hated that they no longer lived together, he was still bound and determined to be her big brother, whether her snotty new parents wanted him in her life or not. When it had all become too much, he disappeared from foster-care at the age of fourteen and lived on the streets of Swansea as close to Jenna's respectable new home as he dared, thinking it was a much better, much _safer_ alternative to foster-care. Oh, how wrong he was!

He had suffered through all sorts of abuse, varying in type and degree, as he was passed around the foster-care institutes on offer in South Wales, but, despite the hurt and the emotional carousel, he was never without the most basic of necessities – food, clothes and a roof over his head.

That first night he faced sleeping in a doorway on a cold street a stone's throw away from Swansea Marina, he had thought himself so tough, believed that after all he had endured in his short life, roughing it on the streets would be a breeze. By four that morning, he was crying like a baby.

It was so hard to stay warm, even in the summer months, and it took him a while to learn the tricks of the trade to survive out there – layers upon layers for insulation, pick-pocketing with two fingers and not your thumb, avoiding being too close to the typically more blustery seafront, staying in old buildings that had a roof and four walls and enough of them to keep the worst of the inclement weather out. He had quickly learnt which shelters to avoid if you wanted to stay off the radar of the police and social services. He eventually came to know where to go to get a hot meal, more clothes or a woollen blanket, enduring the well-meant religious sermons from the Salvation Army volunteers as he ate their soup and sifted through their clothes bins.

However, he was not the only one out on the streets trying to survive and he was certainly not the only one trying to remain under the radar, and stealing from others on the street was often less risky than trying for the shelters. There were a few scuffles here and there as boundaries were tried and tested, and Mick's young age and slim physique meant that he hadn't always won - he had learnt pretty quickly that street-fighting was a dirty affair, one without rules and that any possible way to gain the advantage should be taken. Mick had only ever been hurt badly enough to warrant a trip to the hospital once while out on the streets, and it also happened to be what took him off them - he was stabbed by someone who wanted his blanket on a cold winter's night.

He remembered waking up, groaning as the unmistakable scent of hospital hit the back of his nose before forcing his eyes open, only to be met with his sister's tear-stained face and the disapproving glare of her foster-parents. The relationship between Mick and Jenna's foster-parents was an antagonistic one, at best, and while they had both tried to talk Jenna into distancing herself from her troubled brother they had never outright stopped her from seeing him, either. He ignored them and opted to focus on Jenna, listening as she cried and hiccupped her way through her fears and concerns – Mick had been dismayed to learn that they were all centred on him.

He'd hugged her as tightly as his injured body had allowed, and promised her, gently whispering in her ear as he glared at her foster-parents over her shoulder, entirely resentful that he wasn't allowed even five minutes alone with his own sister. He promised her that he would get his act together, that he would do everything he could to grow up and that once he was old enough she would come and live with him. He had no idea if his promises held any merit, not entirely sure about the legal demands of them all, but he was determined never to be the cause of that devastated look across her face ever again. He thought he'd managed pretty well until he'd woken up in Woolwich.

Her tear-stained face was once again the first thing he remembered seeing upon awakening. He couldn't recall much of that first time, but apparently he'd sung her some half-remembered Welsh lullaby that their mother had often sung to them, _'Suo Gan'_ , in an effort to try and calm her down. Mick thought his singing was pretty bad on a good day, fully awake and stone-cold sober - he hated to think what he might have done to one of his mother's favourite songs half asleep and drugged out of his mind.

However, apparently it had worked, and after some pissed off nurse found her curled up asleep beside him, Jenna was given a stern lecture about patients needing plenty of _'unhindered'_ healing space. He almost wished he'd been conscious for his sister's response – her foster-parents were more than a little disappointed that so much of her big brother's _'smart-arsed sarcasm'_ had rubbed off on her over the years, while Mick just thought it was hilarious and was quietly relieved that there were still parallels to draw between them both.

Having spent more of their lives growing up in separate homes than together under the same roof, Mick had often pondered on the nature versus nurture argument – despite having grown up leading such different lives, there did at times seem to be some similarities between them.

Physically, neither one of them was particularly big, Mick being of a relatively average height while his sister measured at just barely over five foot. Both of them were of a wiry build, with not an ounce of extra flesh to them.

With Mick's military training, he had bulked up some, but his body was still all lean muscle. His slim build had often meant that he seemed entirely unthreatening and that had come with many a complication throughout the course of his life. Foster-carers, schoolyard bullies, people out on the street, even a couple of his instructors all seemed to want to have a go, believing him to be an easy target - he'd shown them otherwise, of course, but his naturally slim build seemed to mean he was constantly having to prove himself capable of defending himself.

His sister, unaided by military training, was almost elfin-like in appearance, all sharp angles and sinewy limbs. Her huge eyes often made her look a lot younger and far more vulnerable to the harsh ways of the world, when she was actually one of the strongest people Mick knew.

In spite of the terrors of their childhood, Jenna had come out the other end pretty much whole, while Mick often felt as though he was simply pretending - watching normal people from afar, never truly comfortable in their presence but too much a sociable creature to stay hidden away forever. He had left school at sixteen, eager to leave that part of his life behind him and, given that his school records were full of fights, suspensions and truancy, he never even contemplated college and university. The Army brought him a sense of camaraderie and a purpose that had long been missing from his life, and they'd trained him up to be the best, but that hadn't meant that he'd ever wanted Jenna to follow him down the same path.

Thankfully, his sister was a much more dedicated academic. Jenna was a star pupil, keen to carry on her success through university and become a teacher, to inspire others to follow their dreams and be all they could be – her personal version of the British Army's motto of _'be the best'_.

He'd teased her about her idealistic approach to the world, of course, but truthfully he was just glad that she wasn't as jaded as he frequently felt. He still greatly disliked her foster-parents (and he refused to think of them in any other way even though they had long since adopted her), in particular, he detested the way they constantly looked down their noses at him – he didn't think he'd turned out half bad, all things considered. While he liked the fact that Jenna stuck up for him each and every time they started in on all his flaws, he hated to be the source of contention in her new family - he may not have gotten the same second chance, but he certainly didn't want _Jenna_ to suffer for it.

Other than their rather angular features, they shared the same brown eyes. Mick's hair was short and in various hues of browns while Jenna's hair was much darker and a mess of waves, and they both needed some form of product to tame their wild hair. Mick's time in the military saw the advent of a much shorter cut, but when he wasn't on tour, he let it grow that little bit longer, while Jenna had never had short hair and looked positively horrified when he told her she'd suit the pixie look – a half-remembered childhood name of _'Pix'_ doing little to alleviate the perceived insult.

They were, against all the odds, as close as any two siblings could be. Years of growing up apart had done little to diminish their relationship, and Mick wondered if the tragedy of their childhood had formed an unbreakable bond. He'd always been close to Jenna, even before they lost the rest of their family, but they seemed to rely upon one another much more and be far more honest with each other about their more personal issues than a lot of other siblings. He was sure that, like he himself did, Jenna still kept some secrets of her own, and rightly so – there were some things that really did _not_ need to be shared amongst siblings.

Despite being so close, he hated that Jenna was there when he'd woken up, disorientated and completely drugged out of his mind. He can only remember snippets of that first time but he knew enough to recognise that his severely weakened state had affected his sister in all the worst possible ways.

He was grateful for Danny's presence, who's quiet, innate strength acted as an antidote to _both_ their troubled souls. Despite the constant threats of bodily harm Mick threw at Danny should he act in a manner less than platonic towards his sister, he knew there was no one he trusted more with her. He could have done without the gentle flirting that had been carried out in front of him, of course, as he hated being forced to think about his baby sister all grown up, but he had been gladder than he could say that Danny had been there to lift her spirits while he drifted in and out of consciousness.

They had both been hanging around the hospital more than they should – Jenna had school and Danny had only just got out of the hospital himself. Mick had heard the nurses berating the Spotter for over-doing it, and with a talk that didn't always border on the calm, quiet side of conversation, he had finally managed to persuade them both to go to a hotel where they could shower and rest. They had both flat-out refused to go home, too worried about him both physically and psychologically to stray too far, and Mick hated being reminded of just how weak he was lying in a hospital bed and attached to a plethora of machines and tubing, some of which were in places they had no business being!

A quiet knock at the door brought Mick out of his musings and he sighed out loud with frustration, an insult on the tip of his tongue right up until the moment he turned and saw, not Jenna, not Danny, but Sam Cooper.

"Hey," he offered with a raised eyebrow. He had become good friends with Sam during the time between meeting the man and his capture, but he certainly hadn't thought the man would travel all the way to the UK to see him.

"Mick," Sam nodded in response, taking a quick moment to scan the prone man before him. He'd heard the question in Mick's short greeting and Sam wondered how, for all of his seeming confidence and popularity, the Welshman seemed so sure he wasn't worth the relatively quick trip over from Germany.

Physically, the young man seemed a lot better. He was still hooked up to a lot of machines that indicated Mick was not entirely out of the woods yet, but he was propped up in his bed and awake. He was talking and breathing on his own and he was responsive.

Sam remembered meeting Steele, one of Rawson and Wallcroft's fellow POWs, who had driven back with Mick from the ambush site. The young man had been beside himself with anguish at how unresponsive Mick had become on the journey back to the FOB, and full of guilt for not being able to do more to help the British soldiers. When he recounted the tale of Mick's response, or lack thereof, after Danny went down, it was clear the Welshman must have been in a very serious state to ignore his best friend's possible demise - to see him awake and alert brought about a breath of relief.

"How are you doing?" he asked as he took a hesitant step into the room. He and Mick had struck up a good rapport in Iraq, but those bonds didn't always translate back to the civilian world.

"I can't complain, I guess," Mick shrugged. "You?"

"I certainly can't complain," Sam reply with a wry quirk of his lips. He briefly wondered just what would have to happen to Mick for the Welshman to think he _could_ complain.

"Nice to see you and everything, mate, but what the hell are you doing here?" Never let it be said that Mick was a master of tact.

"Came to check up on a couple of friends," Sam replied deliberately, as if he was talking to a rather slow child. Mick's eyebrows furrowed further still. "You _do_ realise that you and Danny had half the Joint Operations Taskforce skulking around the med tents, pouncing on anyone who looked like they might even _know_ someone in the Med. Corps, right? Last we knew you weren't doing too well."

"Danny's out of hospital already," Mick informed his friend, his resentment at his fellow soldier's liberation a little too clear.

"Really?" Sam asked, surprised. His last memory of Danny had been of him being rushed to a helicopter, the medics surrounding him covered in the Spotter's blood.

Mick nodded tiredly. "Yep. Bullet missed his lungs – lucky bastard! He had some pretty severe blood loss, shock and a broken rib, but once they got the blood loss sorted, there wasn't much else for the doctors to do. Doc's orders are to rest, take his pills and rest some more."

Sam huffed out a small laugh, amazed that his friend had escaped the hospital so soon after looking like death was just around the corner. The blood loss had been a very real threat, as had the shock, but apparently once Wallcroft had undergone an operation to repair the damage and had his blood volume restored, his condition had improved dramatically and he'd been out of the danger zone.

"And what about you?" Sam asked, suppressing a grin when he saw Mick's incredibly juvenile scowl.

"God knows," he grumbled. "They've pumped me full of blood and drugs and vitamins and everything else under the sun, apparently. I still feel more cyborg than human," he said, gesturing to the mass of tubes and machines surrounding him, "but apparently, I'm _'doing well'_ " he sneered at the Doctor's assessment, given just how ridiculously _unwell_ he felt.

"They gave me the all clear for the shoulder wound and don't think there'll be any long-lasting damage, but they've already stuck me with some sadist of a physio who seems to think I should be able to move like a damn contortionist. The bullet to the abdomen nicked the large intestine, so I'm minus a couple of inches inside and they've got me on a thrilling diet of apple sauce and a cocktail of antibiotics." Sam didn't think it possible, but Mick's scowl deepened further. "They told me I can't have _coffee_!"

"Now that _is_ a human right's violation," Sam agreed. Mick could spend a couple of days in a perch without moving a muscle, and barely a morsel of food or a drop of water would pass his lips, and he'd do it _all_ without complaint, but if he returned to base and found there was no coffee Mick didn't simply stop at grumbling, but at waging war on the poor, unsuspecting soul who finished the last mug. Mind you, Sam had his own coffee fixation so he couldn't say too much without appearing a hypocrite.

"Damn straight!" Mick agreed, nodding his head a little too vigorously, a slight wince told Sam that such a simple movement clearly came with consequences.

"You ok?" he asked, stepping closer to the bed.

"Yep," Mick replied through gritted teeth. "I've just got to remember to stop doing that. The Doc said I could suffer from the head injury for a couple of months yet – said the concussion from the crash on top of all those I got before came with _'consequences'_ ," he spat that last part, pissed that his Doctor seemed to think there was something he could have done to avoid them in the first place. The doctor he'd had in Woolwich had been nice enough and explained things to him without making him feel ridiculously idiotic, his new one in Peterborough…not so much.

Sam took note of the careful way in which Mick avoided referring to the torture he had endured, simply using _'before'_ as a woefully inadequate euphemism. He imagined that both Mick and Danny were suffering from the more psychological aspects of their captivity now they had nothing but time to think about it, but he also knew that he would probably need to build up an approach towards that side of things so the Welshman didn't bolt at the first sign of concern directed his way.

"Effects of the hypothermia's all gone now – they warmed me up and pumped me full of glucose and thiamine and gave me the all clear. Of course, then my chest infection turned to pneumonia and they shoved a damn tube in my chest and the numbness of hypothermia became all too appealing," Mick offered Sam a dry grin.

"A chest infection?" Sam demanded, finally sitting down in the uncomfortable looking chair by Mick's bed, his concern for his friend overcoming all previous uneasiness about his presence.

"Yeah, I got one before. Apparently, repeated drownings and being forced to hang about in the cold desert air in wet clothing is hazardous to the health – who knew," the young Sniper replied with a glib shrug of his shoulders.

It was Sam's turn for furrowing the brows. Everyone knew that they had been tortured, but beyond that the details were sketchy at best. He wondered if Danny had suffered through the same treatment. He'd been told by Steele that Mick had been singled out almost from the start, but it had been equally clear that no one, not even a civilian aid worker, had escaped unscathed.

"The Doc said I was pretty much predetermined to get an infection given everything else – the infection in the shoulder, the dysentery, the malnutrition and dehydration, the…torture," he stumbled over that last word. He knew what he had endured, but admitting to it out loud didn't seem to make the word any more palatable.

"You had dysentery?" Sam asked incredulously. The more he heard, the more amazed he was that Mick was still in the land of the living.

"Yeah. Came down with a pretty bad fever with the shoulder wound and that apparently sunk my immune system into the gutter, because I went down with dysentery not long after. But I _did_ get this wonderfully svelte figure out of the deal," he offered humourlessly as he gestured towards his emaciated body.

"Anyway, other than that, it's just a mess of cuts and bruises that are all healing nicely enough. I've got a couple of broken ribs, but then it's not like I'm doing anything to risk a puncture now, is it? Although with the pneumonia, the sadists here keep forcing me to hack up all the gunk in my lungs and to _'breathe deeply'_ and _that_ hurts like a bitch!" Mick complained bitterly.

"And here I thought you couldn't complain," Sam offered with a small grin that his heart wasn't in _at all_ – he'd simply felt that a moment of levity might get some of the uncomfortable tension in the room out of the way.

Mick laughed, wincing slightly as the movement pulled on his lungs but he didn't attempt to stop himself – it had been a long time since he'd really laughed and it felt good despite the pain.

He wasn't usually one to air his ailments, having learnt long ago that on the whole, no one cared. However, he'd tried to avoid talking about it with Jenna at all, not wanting her to worry or know about the true extent of his injuries – he didn't know what the doctors had told her while he'd been unconscious but she hadn't talked about the torture so far and Mick was more than happy to continue the silence on that particular topic.

With Danny, it was less a case of trying to _hide_ the truth and more one of simply trying not to _acknowledge_ it. They had both suffered through similar treatment and they already knew the ins and outs of their injuries, having tended to them out in the middle of the Iraqi desert. But neither man was ready to fully face exactly what had happened out there. It didn't help that Danny was blaming himself for Mick's extra torture sessions and Mick was blaming himself for Danny's gunshot wound. They'd been through entirely too much together not to sort themselves out sooner rather than later, but they both just needed a little more time to reconcile with it all.

Sam Cooper was ready and willing to listen to Mick's aches and pains _and_ the long gripes about them – hell, the man had seemingly come all the way to the UK to do just that! It was nice to have the man, who never seemed to judge Mick despite all his short-comings, offer a friendly ear.

Of course, he was so pumped full of drugs that the verbal filter in his mind seemed to have disintegrated away to practically nothing, and that helped ease things along somewhat. He had expended a huge amount of effort in making sure his drug-addled mind didn't let anything slip in front of Jenna and Danny, but he didn't feel the need to be quite so careful with Sam, which was a huge source of relief – trying to stay focused on what you're saying when you can barely feel your own nose costs an exhaustive amount of effort.

They spent a brief few minutes catching up on the bare essentials. Mick asked about Steele and Hauser, but Sam couldn't tell him much other than the fact that they'd both gone home. He was amused to hear Mick talk about Steele as _'the kid'_ given that there was barely a couple of years between the two - he knew that Mick had lived through a lot in his short life, but it still seemed unreal to hear him talk about a soldier two years his junior as though he had at least ten years on him.

He asked about Hassan and could see that Sam was unhappy with leaving him behind. He respected the way that Cooper seemed to look out for Hassan, gently and quietly and entirely without causing a scene, but with a steely spine and a sharp mind should someone try to take advantage of the idealistic young man.

He asked if Sam knew what had happened to Anderson and was informed that the Sergeant's body had been found, flown back to the US and given a proper military burial. He had never got on well with Anderson, but the man had been a damn good soldier and he was injured in the line of duty - protecting Mick and Danny as they covered the retreat to the chopper. He had helped save many lives that day, and he hadn't deserved to go out like he did, left all alone to rot in in the desert sun, with nothing but his pain to keep him company to the end.

He asked about Samson and Mick could not hide the sadness upon learning of the man's death - he knew it was not just likely but _probable_ , but until he found out one way or the other there had at least been hope. He'd not counted Samson as a friend, having never really gotten to know the man well enough, but he'd liked the man. The Sergeant had been a consummate soldier, always ready, able and more than willing to go that extra mile. His quiet, contemplative nature was a soothing balm out in the field, either in the heat of battle or when boredom came a calling.

"So why are you here instead of back home in the US?" Mick asked, not caring at all that his change of topic after Samson was entirely transparent.

"I don't have anything to go back to," Sam replied honestly with a shrug. Before the ambush, he and Mick had talked about a great many topics and while some of the more personal topics were strictly off the table (Sam's time at the BAU and what finally caused him to leave, and pretty much all of Mick's childhood) there were other subjects that they had conversed over rather candidly. Sam knew that if was ever going to get more from Mick than redirection and a pointed silence, he would have to be the one to open up first.

"Nothing at all?" Mick asked trying to hide his incredulity. Sam was a wise man who had clearly been well-educated – that likely meant university, and his time at the FBI meant the training academy. Sure, Cooper could be a bit of a loner, allowing the darker side of humanity to swallow him up whole from time to time, but then Mick would be hard pressed to think of anyone who could remain so unaffected after a career in the BAU. However, Cooper was a good man with a sense of humour and a strong moral backbone and Mick found it hard to imagine the man was wholly without friends.

"I have some old friends," Sam shrugged. "But most of them are in the FBI and I don't think I'm quite ready to travel down that road again just yet."

"I know I have no idea what happened to make you leave so you can just tell me to fuck off if you want, but don't you think your friends would want you to stay in touch? Know that you’re ok?" Mick asked hesitantly.

Sam nodded. He knew he had hurt several people with the way he had cut all ties with the Bureau, and he knew that some people could not even understand why he had left in the first place, believing _him_ to have abandoned the BAU and the FBI altogether, rather than the other way around. Agents like Hotchner and Gideon would understand, and Sam knew that they wouldn't hold it against him when he was finally ready to face up to his past at the BAU, but as for the rest of them, he wasn't sure if he could ever repair those bridges.

"One day," he smiled sadly at the younger man.

Mick let his head fall back into the pillow, unable to meet the look in Cooper's eyes that spoke of a profound sense of loss and grief and a muted melancholy that suggested he'd been living with those emotions for a long time.

"You been debriefed yet?" it was Sam's turn to change the topic.

"Not fully, not yet," Mick shook his head. "They've been in a couple of times, but the medical-staff were pretty adamant about taking it slow. I guess they were right to be cautious – it was during their first attempt to debrief me that my pneumonia made itself known. That was fun – nothing quite like coughing up a whole load of phlegm all over a superior officer's shirt before vomiting on his shoes," he stated with typical dry humour.

"Seriously?" Sam asked, with a laugh, finding the episode all too easy to picture.

"Well, I don't know that anything actually _hit_ him, but it wasn't through a lack of trying – the guy came across as a bit of a prick, to be honest," Mick joked back. "They probably would have pushed for sooner, drug-induced delirium or not, if it hadn't been for Danny – obviously there are going to be differences between our experiences, but they got the essentials from him, at least. Apparently, now that I can string two sentences together without gasping for breath, they're aiming to start a more thorough debrief tomorrow afternoon, and it sounds like I've got half the military brass to talk to over the next few weeks, so that'll be fun," he said, voice laden with sarcasm.

He turned to stare back up at the ceiling, all the talk of debrief reminding him that he was going to have to talk about everything that had happened in front of many a superior officer, some familiar, most complete strangers – he was far from enthusiastic about it all. He barely had the energy to sit up, how was he going to manage a few dozen Q&A sessions with any degree of clarity?

"You ok?" Sam asked. He taken note of the way the younger man's eyes had grown heavier, as well as the way the Sniper was resolutely doing his best not to succumb to sleep.

"I'm ok," Mick offered, slowly turning his head to look at the other man. He saw Sam raise an eyebrow at his statement and cast a glance at his battered body before giving him a wry grin – he knew exactly what Cooper was saying, even if it _was_ without words. "Alright, so I'm not _'ok'_ , obviously," he said as he gestured to his own body.

Sam nodded, surprised that Mick had even made such an admission. He had only known the man for a few, badly interrupted, weeks, but he knew that the proud young Welshman was not one prone to admitting to his weaknesses.

"I will be, you know," Mick offered quietly, a yawn breaking up his sentence. "I know I look pretty bad, but I'll be ok." It sounded more like he was reassuring himself than Sam.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. Mick Rawson had already proven himself to be made of strong stuff, and Sam had no doubt that the man's fortitude in the face of adversity would only strengthen. "Yeah, you will be."

Mick didn't answer, as he had finally allowed exhaustion and the drug cocktail that flowed through his IV to take over and pull him into a deep, much needed sleep.

* * *

** MOD ** **– Ministry of Defence _, the UK equivalent of America's_ DOD _(_ Department of Defence _). The_ MDHU's _(_ Ministry of Defence's Health Units _) are run in conjunction with the NHS for military personnel and their dependents. Most hospitals in the UK dedicated solely to the MOD and its personnel have closed due to spending cuts. There is now the Queen Elizabeth Hospital in Birmingham that treats operational casualties, but this only opened in 2010 (too late for this story)._**

** C-17 Globemaster ** **_– is a Boeing military plane used by the US, the UK and many more beside. In the UK, some are used for troops and cargo, others by_ ** ** Aeromed ** **_. The_ ** ** Aeromedical Evacuation Co-ordination Cell ** **_(_ ** ** AECC ** **_) is based at RAF Brize Norton, and at the height of the wars in the Middle East, they were transporting almost 5,000 high priority patients a year, getting them back to British soil in less than 24 hours. They are fully equipped medical centres in the air, complete with the most vital of life-saving machines and an incredible medical crew who is in constant contact with the hospital, providing status updates so the urgent care received on land will be at its most efficient._ **


	11. Chapter 11

It had been over nine months since Sam had last seen Mick in person and almost twelve months since he had first visited the young Welshman in Peterborough City Hospital. By his last visit at the hospital, Mick had been walking, free of chest tubes and cannulas, and nine months ago, Mick had been making frequent trips to the local rehab centre. It had been more than clear that the road to recovery would be a long one, taking several months rather than a few weeks, but it had also been clear that Mick's stubborn streak and sheer determination would see him _fully_ recover – the man simply didn't have it in him to fail.

During that time, Sam had spent several weeks in the South East, attempting to keep Mick's increasing impatience and frustration with his infirmity in check. The two had spent a lot of time talking, still largely avoiding the heavy topics but slowly becoming more familiar and more comfortable with each other. Sam had also spent a lot of time getting to know Danny better and finally meeting Jenna.

She was a much softer version of Mick – she could be just as cutting in her sarcasm and her wry humour was so alike her brother's it was uncanny, but she seemed more at ease with people, more disposed to believe in the best of them. She smiled more and her smiles were not bitter or cynical, but gentle and genuine. She was slower to anger and altogether far less damaged than her older brother.

It was clear to Sam that despite his own cynical worldview, Mick did his very best to ensure his sister was untouched by such scepticism, even his own. It was obvious that he adored his little sister and just as obvious that he felt somewhat estranged from her – Sam couldn't imagine separating a brother and sister in the wake of what had evidently been a set of very traumatic events.

It was fun to see her interactions with Danny and Mick's reactions to them both together – he was clearly uncomfortable seeing _anyone_ flirt with his sister, but it was just as apparent that he trusted Danny with the most precious thing in his life.

Danny's flirtations were mild compared to the sort of talk he had frequently engaged in out in Iraq, and Sam wasn't sure if it was due to a genuine fear that Mick would retaliate for such crudity in front of his little sister or because he had a sincere regard for Jenna – he suspected it was more to do with the latter and was certain that Mick did too, given the frequent display of narrowed eyes directed their way.

It had been good for Mick, no matter how uncomfortable he had often felt with their flirtatious banter – anything that distracted him from his injuries, from his inability to get out of bed without gasping for breath, could only be a good thing. The words could have been barbarous had it not been for the smiles and evident humour in the constant to-and-fro banter shared between Mick and Danny. Jenna had simply been overjoyed to see that the two men were still capable of having fun, and her happiness had in turn fed into their own.

Sam had kept in touch when he could during the course of Mick's rehabilitation – the odd letter here, a short phone-call there – but for the first time in nine months he finally had the time available to head back over to the UK and see his friend with his own eyes.

Through their somewhat spotty communication, he knew that after several long and hard months of physiotherapy aimed towards regaining his muscle-mass and dexterity, Mick had finally reached the stage where he considered himself to be back to his old level of fitness, which was probably just as well considering what he had enrolled himself in.

He and Danny had been invited to try out for Selection, the gruelling set of tests and exercises to join the elite ranks of the SAS. Mick and Danny had both jumped at the challenge, grateful for something to aim for and to keep their minds from dwelling on their last, disastrous tour in Iraq. By the time either one of them was anywhere _near_ healthy enough to even consider trying, Winter Selection was their first shot.

Winter Selection was notoriously harder than Summer Selection, primarily because the Hill Phase was completed in some of the harshest conditions the Black Mountains could conjure - the cold, snowy landscape was only the beginning, with the strong, icy winds that blew across the treacherous terrain of Pen y Fan making the journey that much more perilous.

Before Mick and Danny had started the Hill Phase, Sam had spoken of his concerns about Mick pushing himself before he was really ready. The sniper had been pretty frank about how far he still had to go to get to the fitness-level he _wanted_ , but he'd also been quite positive about the effects his more intensive training schedule was having on his body – there had been no detrimental side-effects, and there were a whole host of friends on hand to make sure he didn't overdo it. Sam had had no choice but to take his word for it. He also knew that it was just as much about Mick proving himself ready on a psychological level as it was on a physical one.

On hearing that they had both passed the Hill Phase, Sam had been ecstatic for his friends and even more so for the genuine proof that physically, at least, they were both much better. Mick and Danny were simply relieved not to have the stigma of _'Returned to Unit'_ attached to their names.

The next phase saw them diving into more comprehensive training of what they had already achieved in the Paras – handling any and all types of weapons that were used by both allied and enemy military groups, becoming accustomed to a large array of vehicles and learning the basics of explosives, in both setting them up and dismantling them. The many forays onto the high-lands in _all_ weather types allowed for military exercises on small unit patrol tactics, as well as both defensive and offensive manoeuvres. Both Mick and Danny were elated with it, relishing in the comfort of training under such familiar circumstances while enjoying the challenge that came with following a much more comprehensive and rigorous programme than their original training had allowed for.

Sam had understandably heard nothing of them while they were in the Jungle Phase, though Mick sent him a postcard he'd picked up at the airport and raved about the tropical beauty of Belize. Six weeks in Central America and both Mick and Danny had looked as though they'd spent the time in the Arctic – their skin was pale and looked as though they hadn't seen a ray of sunshine, and they'd both lost weight. When Sam had teasingly mentioned it over a video-call, Danny had been very indignant and insisted that little sun got through the dense canopy and anyway, they'd sensibly covered themselves up. Mick had simply shrugged his shoulders and muttered some derogatory comment about sun-bathing in a particularly flippant manner.

The final part of Selection was what had Sam worried. He'd spent enough time mingling with members of Special Forces from several different nations and the end of training was almost always geared towards counter-interrogation techniques. For both Mick and Danny, who had experienced them in a very real manner, he worried that the experience would cut a little too close to home.

He hadn't seen or spoken to them since they had completed their final test and didn't yet know whether or not either one of them had made it. He'd been stuck in a small hill-top village in Helmand Province, helping the CIA with a HVT and going four weeks past his supposed tour of duty. Once free, he'd managed to catch a ride with the RAF and travel straight to Brize Norton in the UK, heading at once to Hereford, home of the SAS and the final part of Selection training.

He'd arranged to meet up in the same pub as the one where he was staying, eager and nervous all at once to what he might find. He hoped that neither one of them had reacted negatively to the counter-interrogation training but he just didn't know how anyone could come out the other side so wholly unaffected.

"It's good to see you, mate," Mick grinned and raised his pint. Sam breathed a sigh of relief at seeing his friends seemingly unaffected by their latest ordeal.

"So…am I allowed to ask?" Sam wondered tentatively in lieu of an actual greeting as he sat down opposite them, a beer ready and waiting for him. "I know you Special Forces types like to keep things on the quiet side."

"You _do_ know that we were _already_ in Special Forces when we met, right?" Danny pointed out with a wry grin.

"A Special Forces _support group_ , but now you're SAS," Sam stated rather than asked. "And that's a pretty big deal."

"You are now looking at two of the latest additions to the 22nd Regiment," Mick confirmed. "Generally speaking, we’re supposed to keep it quiet, but given that you're a profiler _and_ that we're likely to be working with you out there in a few months' time there's not exactly a lot of point in trying to hide it from you. Besides, you're not an idiot – you know exactly what _this_ means," he said, gesturing to the sand-coloured beret clutched in his hands.

Mick had felt so proud the day he was awarded his red beret, the signature item of uniform for a member of the Parachute Regiment. The Paras were world-renowned for their high level of training and competence, and the red beret was a symbol, evidence to all and sundry, that marked you as one of the world's elite soldiers.

He had earned the sand-coloured beret, and he felt proud for its hard-won presence, but it was the red beret that had given him the first family he'd had since his own had been so violently taken from him – it was the red beret that had given him a purpose to fulfil and meaning to his existence – it was the red beret that had made him who he was, and he would never forget that.

It seemed strange to hold a sandy one in its place, the same style simply a different colour and insignia, and yet so much more besides. People didn't know a lot about the SAS, it being a notoriously enigmatic military unit that guarded its secrets closely, but it was well known how hard it was to join that elite unit and how much was expected of them once they had made it through Selection.

"Is it true you have to dress up as a Second World War soldier during your escape and evasion training?" Sam asked curiously, having heard snippets about Selection through his time spent amongst the soldiers.

"Yeah," Danny confessed. "You're there in exactly what they were wearing when the SAS first started off and you've got the bare minimum in survival equipment and a rendezvous point bloody miles off, while they hunt you down using every last bit of modern technology at their disposal, from dogs to helicopters, from night vision to thermal scopes."

"We did alright, though," Mick shrugged.

"We're snipers…we _should_ do alright," Danny pointed out. "We're already supposed to be experts at hiding in plain sight."

"If you manage to evade capture does that mean you don't have to do the TQ section of the training?" Sam inquired, already suspecting the answer.

"No, they still make you do it," Danny lamented. "You never get _that_ lucky."

"Oh come on, it wasn't that bad," Mick laughed at his friend's forlorn face. "Besides, it's all over and done with now."

"Yeah, until we have to go through it all again in 16 months," Danny moaned.

"It's not the full training," Mick explained to Sam, who had raised an eyebrow in question. "But you do have to prove you're still up to scratch, requalify." He turned to the spotter, "For now though, stop bloody moaning and appreciate the fact that you made it into the Regiment."

"Yeah, well done," Sam said, a proud smile on his face as he raised his glass for a toast. "I have a feeling the next round is on me."

"Isn't that funny, we were thinking the exact same thing," Danny noted wryly.

"Strange, how the world works," Mick agreed before quickly downing the last of his pint. "Best not to upset the balance, I guess," he shrugged before pushing his empty glass towards Sam with a smile that might have been called innocent were it not for the mischievous glint in his eyes.

* * *

Danny had disappeared four pints later, and Mick and Sam were alone at their end of the pub. It was only due to the relative solitude that Sam felt he could ask about the final stage.

"So, the TQ training…how did it really go?" he asked directly but gently – he knew Mick preferred the straightforward approach.

Mick snorted inelegantly into his pint. "Thanks, mate, Danny owes me £50."

"Sorry?" Sam replied, not entirely understanding.

"He bet you wouldn't say anything, whereas I _knew_ you would," Mick shrugged his shoulders helplessly. "You're a mother hen, Coop. It seems a little strange, a civilian clucking over a couple of soldiers, but you seem pretty determined to make sure we drink our milk, eat our greens and go to bed at a reasonable hour."

"It's nice to know my concern is earning you a little money on the side," riposted Sam with a faint chuckle, before pointing out, "But you didn't answer my question."

"I survived the real thing, Coop. I mean, don't get me wrong, they can be pretty rough, but knowing there's an end in sight, knowing they're not _actually_ going to spend the next God knows how many weeks waterboarding you…that helps… _a lot_! Mostly, it was just a lot of discomfort – cold, bare cell, no food, sleep deprivation, stress positions…that sort of thing."

"But it didn't bring it all back for you? No flashbacks or panic attacks?" he asked worriedly.

Mick paused and shook his head, clearly uncomfortable with the conversation, whether for the topic itself or for the concern being thrown his way Sam couldn't say, but he wanted an answer – he _needed_ to know that his friend was ok.

"You know considering you left the BAU you still like to spend a lot of time focusing on how people think," the young Welshman grumbled not entirely good-naturedly.

"You know it's not exactly something I can turn off, right?"

"Yeah, I know," Mick gave him a soft smile to show him that he wasn't really angry. "But I've spent enough time with the shrinks this last year – I don't need to be analysed by my friends, too."

"Sorry," Sam replied a little bashfully. He knew that it was an occupational hazard, profiling everyone he came into contact with. He hadn't lied to Mick – it wasn't something he could turn off, no matter how much he might want to at times, and it was yet another consequence of his time at the BAU that no matter how far he ran, he could not escape.

There was a slight silence, Sam worrying over what he had said and if he had pushed the private Welshman too far, and Mick wondering if he had perhaps been a little short with his friend.

"It _was_ a little harder than I expected, being reminded of it all," Mick said, so softly that Sam had to strain to hear him, while the Welshman was resolutely staring into his pint and avoiding eye contact. "But compared to the real thing it was a joke. I've done the whole Survival, Evasion, Resistance, Escape thing before and they teach you the same sort of techniques even if they're not applied with quite the same level of force, but it is all so wholly inadequate.

"I remember when I was there and there was yet another waterboarding session and it just went on and on, and my chest was burning and my head was pounding from a lack of oxygen and my muscles were cramping and it felt like I was going to drown, and Fahim was there asking me again and again about Allied positions and informants and…" Mick shook his head, frowning as he was lost in his memories. "There was nothing in my training that helped me get through that, Coop.

"I remember being told that when you feel yourself start to panic, you should sing to yourself as a way of regulating your breathing and to give you something else to focus on – they taught us that and so many more techniques, and in the end, not one of them helped…not really.

"They tell you that you're not supposed to mouth off, that you're supposed to try and blend in, make yourself the _'grey man'_ , someone so wholly inoffensive, someone who doesn't stand out in any way, shape or form, so that you get the bare minimum of their attention. Of course, in practice it's a little different.

"There was only so long Fahim was going to take _'I'm sorry, but I cannot answer that question'_ as a valid response. There were four of us there, and there was no way a sadist like Fahim was going to leave us alone just because we didn't offend him. He liked the power, liked having total control over us, he liked humiliating us and more than anything, he liked hurting us – there is no ignoring that and there's no bypassing that."

"And you made yourself stand out?" Sam guessed.

Mick's frown deepened. "I don't know," he shook his head. "That first place, they were herding us towards the trucks and one of them pushed me, _hard_ , tore at my shoulder wound and when I cried out Danny made like he was going to try and do something – I shook my head, silently begging him not to do anything stupid, and Fahim saw that and took it as evidence of chain of command.

"I didn't go _looking_ to be his shiny new toy, Coop – I know you think I can be a little reckless at times but even _I'm_ not that fucking stupid! I never got the chance to be the _'grey man'_ because he decided right from the start that _I_ was the one to focus on. Am I glad it was me and not Danny, not Steele, not a goddamn civilian aid worker? You're damn right I am, but it's not something I enjoyed and it's not something I _ever_ want to go through again – I'm not a damn masochist!"

"Has someone said you are?" Sam asked gently, sensing that the rush of words had an origin established long before he asked the question.

Mick gave a derisive snort. "I've probably seen more damn shrinks than _Bundy!_ After the debriefings, the Brass wanted to establish my mental state and then there was a whole barrage of tests aimed at assessing my psychological readiness for Selection, too. Some of them were alright – they spent more time talking than _I_ did and seemed happy enough with my answers, but there were a few who made some choice comments and for a while I thought I was going to be rejected on psychological grounds…Christ, the physical training was almost _easy_ in comparison."

"I'm pretty sure someone with your intelligence could have worked around their questioning without any difficulty," Sam commentated dryly, all too aware of just how easily Mick seemed to steer the topic of conversation in the direction _he_ wanted.

"Look here, Mr. BAU, I don't really think you're one to talk about running rings around the in-house shrinks," Mick answered amusedly. "You think I'm screwed up, and sure, I'm not going to deny it – hell, there'd be no point denying it with _you_. But I'm going to call a spade a spade and say that you're in the same boat, mate – you're just better at hiding it because you know exactly what they're looking for already."

"Fair enough," Sam conceded, a knowing smile twisting his lips on one side of his mouth. "So you never did say, how did the debriefings go in the end?"

"Well, obviously I can't say too much about them but overall it was alright, I suppose," Mick shrugged, thankful for Sam’s tactful change of topic.

"Only _'alright'_?" Sam asked, aware that Mick would not be allowed to go into specifics due to the often confidential nature of Special Forces and the way they operate.

"You know how it is, I'm sure, when the Brass go digging around for answers, never entirely satisfied because you can't fill in all the blanks. They wanted to know what happened on the roof top and there wasn't a whole hell of a lot that either Danny or I could tell them – we were watching the extraction point, covering the men as they retreated, leaving Samson and Anderson to watch over us. There was so much shooting going on…so much noise that I have no idea who or what actually took us down, that I could only guess given our injuries – they didn't like that.

"I told them I woke up in a vehicle, tied up, stripped of all my gear, blind-folded and concussed, with my shoulder hurting like hell. I remember bits of that first interrogation and meeting Fahim – I remember seeing Anderson lying on the ground, covered in blood and barely conscious, and Danny, pissed off and on his knees, guards on either side of him. I remember quite a lot from the second compound, but between the concussion and the blood-loss it gets a little spotty in places those first few days," Mick frowned.

"Of course, then my shoulder wound got infected and there are a hell of a lot more blank spots, and one or two things I wish I _could_ forget," Mick said fervently.

"That bad?" Sam asked gently, aware that it was a rather redundant question, but he wanted to keep Mick talking.

"The smell of your own flesh being seared is a memory anyone would be better off without," Mick shook his head. "Going through it with all those people, so many times, it was harder than I thought. I mean, what happened, happened – it sucks and I wish like hell I could change it, but all things considered I think we did ourselves proud out there.

"But the _worst_ thing about the debriefings was trying to sort it all out in my own head. It's like a bunch of fragmented memories – no seeming order to a lot of them, no context to go with a lot of them, some of them little more than a half-remembered scent or sound, some of them ones you'd be certain were nothing more than nightmares if not for the actual physical scars to lend them a little truth.

"Some of the men there for the debriefings were good – not pushy or dismissive, but others got frustrated and kind of pissed off that I couldn't remember everything perfectly. What with the shoulder wound, the blood-loss, the dysentery, the concussion, and the torture, you'd _think_ they'd give a little leeway. Trying to make sense of all that was difficult enough in my own mind but trying to translate it out loud for all of them…" Mick shrugged his shoulders helplessly.

"Fealey and Briggs were there eventually, which helped. There were a couple of higher ups I knew by name only, and more that I didn't know at all – I had to talk to several different arms of the military, to civil servants and Military Intelligence, to members of American Military Intelligence, too, for the Joint Operations Taskforce. Every time I thought I was done, someone else would crawl out of the woodwork with another list of questions.

"Thankfully, my main nurse was pretty fierce. She kicked them out whenever I got too tired and kept me pretty doped up so that I _would_ get too tired," Mick smiled fondly at the recollection of his petite nurse giving some of the most senior figures in the MOD a piece of her mind – there were some benefits to a civilian hospital.

"How long did it last?" Sam asked curiously – he knew from his own time in the FBI that debriefings had a tendency to be drawn out for days, if not weeks, sometimes even months at a time.

"About a month, I reckon, by the time everyone was done and everything double-checked. They'd already got statements from Danny, as well as Steele and Hauser, so they knew the basics anyway. I think they just wanted to confirm it all and get my take on things, seeing as how I spent more time in Fahim's lovely company than the rest," Mick pointed out sardonically. "AQI has them worried. "

"Speaking of Danny, where's he gone?" Sam asked, sensing a change in topic was at hand. "Do you think he drowned in the toilets? He's been gone a while."

Mick laughed and shook his head, a crooked grin working its way across his mouth. "I would imagine he's outside on the phone to Jenna. They seem to think I'm blind or stupid…or both."

"You mean…?"

"Yep."

"Really?"

"Really."

"And Danny's still breathing?" Sam asked incredulously.

"Am I that bad?" Mick laughed out.

"You tend to be a little…overprotective?" Sam struggled for the right word. "I thought you didn't want your sister to have anything to do with the military?"

Mick shrugged his shoulders, "I'm in the Army…she's going to worry about _that_ anyway, and besides, it's hardly my place to tell her not to worry about Danny, too – he did a lot for her while I was still holed up in that damn hospital.

"You know, it's funny – while we were escaping, Danny was trying to keep me talking and he was asking about Jenna, and I told him that he didn't need to know _anything_ about her, that there was no way I'd let her have anything to do with a soldier. And when I woke up in Woolwich, and Jenna was there and Danny was there comforting her while I was in and out of consciousness…I don't know, I guess I just didn't think it mattered anymore. I trust Danny with my life, and I trust him with her." Mick gave a surprised laugh, "I never thought I'd ever trust _anyone_ with Jenna."

"Big brother's prerogative, I suppose," Sam suggested with a smile.

"He disappears out the room the moment the phone rings and comes back telling me it's his mother or his big brother. Of course, there are two major flaws there: his mother is not exactly the most maternal of people – when we were in Woolwich, she came to see him once before pissing off back home to her latest boyfriend – she only lives in _Stepney_ , for Christ's sake! But _never_ bad-mouth her to Danny – she screwed him up, _a lot_ , but he's still pretty protective of her.

"The brother excuse falls through for an entirely different reason at the moment – he's Special Forces, too, and at the moment he's in Kandahar."

"Maybe they just want to make sure there's something really there before they risk your wrath," Sam suggested wryly.

"Maybe. I can't say I'm _entirely_ happy with it just yet," Mick conceded. "But I _do_ know he'll look after her. Besides, if he fucks it all up, it won't take much effort on my part to hunt him down," he grinned maliciously.

"Speak of the devil," Sam nodded towards the entrance where Danny had just re-entered the pub.

"Sorry about that," Danny apologised. "My mum's a little more proactive with the whole mothering thing right now."

Mick gave Sam a knowing look as his friend sat down, but merely replied, "You can't really blame her."

"Nah, I know. Just wish she wasn't always ringing me," Danny quietly stated, carefully looking anywhere but at his friend. He had been speaking to Jenna for the third time that day. Although they had spent a lot of time together since his return to the UK, they had not been officially dating all that long.

It was new and it was exciting and it was fucking scary. He couldn't deny that he worried about Mick's reaction – Jenna was all the family Mick had left in the world and as a result he was fiercely protective of her. Danny had no intention of hurting her, but he also didn't know just how serious the two of them were yet and the unknown was feeding into his fears regarding Mick and his reaction to their relationship.

Losing Jenna would be hard enough – she was fun and intelligent and kind, and he was desperate to see where the relationship would go. But if it _did_ turn sour, he dreaded to think what effect it would have on his friendship with Mick. The two had been through everything together, from basic to Selection and everything in between, and as a result, they were as close as any brothers – he didn't want to lose that.

As a result, Danny was trying to keep the relationship quiet until he knew how serious it was. He didn't like keeping it from his friend (although he suspected Mick already knew), but he simply didn't know what to say until he could understand it all in his own mind first.

"Well, I'm knackered," Danny said as he stretched out and yawned. "I think I'm going to call it a night, head back to base. You're around for a while, right Cooper?"

"I plan to stick around for a few days," he nodded.

"Well, we'll give you a tour tomorrow. See you then, mate," he offered a hand which Sam took.

"Sure, and Danny? Well done, you've more than earned this."

"Thanks," Danny smiled almost shyly. He didn't have anyone in his own family except his older brother who would offer such a sentiment, and he relished the small, proud smile that flitted across Cooper's face. He gave Mick a solid slap on the shoulder and told him he'd see him back at barracks.

"He seems a lot better," Sam commented quietly.

"Yeah, he's getting there," Mick agreed. "Physically he's absolutely fine. Psychologically…well, it gets a little trickier there. He still blames himself for Fahim honing in on me right from the start – I've spent a lot of hours trying to convince him otherwise, and while I don't think he's there yet, he _is_ getting there. I wish it was easier, wish he'd stop trying to blame himself for something so wholly out of his hands," he shook his head despondently.

"Do _you_ blame yourself for what happened to _him_?" Sam asked pointedly.

Mick's frown deepened – _damn profilers_ , he thought mutinously. "He got shot because he was trying to save me," he grudgingly admitted.

"And Danny told me you got shot trying to save _him_ ," Sam pointed out.

"I know, and I know it isn't logical or even reasonable but I…I don't know. I mean we stopped counting how many times we've saved each other's lives a long time ago, but in Iraq at the end there, things are all jumbled and I can only really remember half of it and even _that_ not particularly clearly, but I _can_ remember him lying down on top of me, covered in blood and I couldn't do a damn thing to help him. I didn't _help_ him, Coop," his eyes silently implored his friend, but for what, Sam couldn't say. "I was just lying there while my best friend was slowly bleeding to death."

"You were bleeding to death, too, Mick - _you_ got shot saving _him_. Try not to be too hard on yourself," Sam stated almost wistfully, painfully aware that things were never that easy.

"Not logical or reasonable, remember?" Mick offered with a half-smile, the haunted look in his eyes receding somewhat. "I'll be fine, though, Coop, promise. Just need the images to die down a little – they're still pretty much in HD right now."

"Well, you know I'm always here if you need someone to talk to, right?" Sam asked.

"I know, my own shrink but without the exorbitant fees," Mick grinned, his eyes much lighter and clearer for the levity.

"Well, I don't know about that," Sam laughed. "I've had my eyes on a new motorcycle and my measly military pay-check alone is sure as hell not going to cover it."

"Well, I guess if I'm going to afford _your_ bills I'd best go rogue then – this beret means I can charge a premium rate for mercenary work now," Mick joked before looking at the man in front of him with growing solemnity. "You know you can always talk to me too, right?"

Sam nodded his thanks. They were slowly beginning to open up about the more difficult experiences they'd endured throughout their lives, and while they still had a way to go, Mick especially, in opening up, it was always good to know that the friendship worked both ways.

"So when are you next off on tour?" he asked, changing the subject once again.

"We're due out in Sierra Leone at the end of next week for about two months, but it's just a peacekeeping mission, really. The Civil War is over and done with and the West Side Boys are all but gone, so there's no real soldiering to do – training up the military there, mostly."

"You been there before?"

"Back when I was with the Paras? Sure. It's a beautiful country, but not without its problems," Mick smiled, "As is the case just about anywhere I've been, mind you. It'll be nice to see something other than desert for a while, though, because it will be a pretty short tour there before moving back to either Afghanistan or Iraq."

"Well, there are always plenty of people to brighten up the scenery," Sam said with mild amusement while not so subtly gesturing towards himself.

Mick gave the man an obvious once over before raising a single brow, "I wouldn't go _that_ far," he offered with a smirk.

"So, the 22nd," Sam started slowly. "Is it all you thought it would be?"

"I've only just made it so I can't really say," Mick pointed out. "I don't know. I was happy with the Paras and if I hadn't made it through Selection I'd still have been in one of the world's most elite regiments. I guess, more than anything, I just wanted to know if I _could_ do it."

"Obviously you can," Sam stated.

"Well, right now I'm stuck being the FNG again, complete with all the crap that comes along with it, but we'll see how it is once the real SAS soldiering comes in. I seem to like making my life as difficult as possible," Mick frowned before shrugging off the thought. "Anyway, it's a challenge and one I hope I'm up to."

"I'm sure you'll do just fine," Sam said with a knowing smile.

* * *

** Selection ** **_– the term used to describe the recruitment period for the_ ** ** SAS ** **_– some people sign themselves up for it, others are recommended by their OCs. You start off with a_ ** ** Briefing Course ** **_(one week) before starting the first of the major phases, the_ ** **Hill Phase _(four weeks) which covers fitness, navigation and endurance. Next is_ Continuation Training _(fourteen weeks) which covers tactics, weapon and vehicle handling, and explosives and demolitions. The_ Jungle Phase _(six weeks) is often carried out in Belize or Borneo, and covers the likes of jungle survival, camp and observation post techniques and field medicine. Lastly, is_ Escape and Evasion _, and_ Tactical Questioning _(four weeks) – the first pretty much speaks for itself and the second is all about the ability to resist interrogation as well as carry it out._**

** Pen y Fan ** **_– a mountain in South Wales in the Brecon Beacons National Park. The_ ** ** 'Fan Dance' ** **_is an endurance test that sees SAS-hopefuls travel forty miles across the mountainous Brecon Beacons (the difficult Pen y Fan amongst them) with a full pack (in excess of fifty-five pounds) as well as weapons, and it must be completed within twenty hours._ **

** Returned to Unit ** **_– there are only two chances to join the_ ** ** SAS ** **_and those who fail get a_ ** ** 'Returned to Unit' ** **_notation in their file._ **

** Paras ** **_– the_ ** ** Parachute Regiment ** **_is the Airborne Infantry of the British Army. The 1st Battalion forms part of the Special Forces Support Group. Their iconic beret, although called 'red' is more burgundy in colour. Actual red berets belong to the_ ** ** MP's ** **_or_ ** ** Military Police ** **_in the UK._ **

** 22nd Regiment ** **_– the_ ** ** SAS ** **_. The 21 st and the 23rd are SAS Reservists, who undergo a slightly less rigorous training programme. The 22nd usually just call themselves _ ** ** 'the Regiment' ** **_._ **

** Bundy ** **_–_ ** ** Ted Bundy ** **_– an American serial killer._ **

** HD ** **_–_ ** ** High Definition ** **_._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_In reality, both Mick and Danny would be too young and without enough years of military service under their belts to make it into the SAS but this is fiction so please allow me some poetic license :P_ **


	12. Chapter 12

Sam raced towards the small, bullet-ridden building that had been made into a make-shift medical unit for injured personnel on the outskirts of Fallujah. The cooler air of the shaded building was a welcome relief after the intense heat of the midday sun. He looked through the darkened hallways, desperately searching out a familiar face before coming to a stop, relief taking over as he saw the young sniper alive.

Mick and Sam had often crossed paths on their overseas tours, and they had both made the effort to meet up where and when they could when the military was not dictating their lives. Over the years they had become good friends, despite their actual time together amounting to very little indeed.

With Sam embedded with the US Marines and Mick forever moving about with British Special Forces, they didn't see a lot of each other if they weren't stationed at the same FOB, and when their paths crossed, different commitments often gave them little real time together. However, when they _did_ meet up, it was as if no time at all had passed since their last meeting, both falling into the easy camaraderie they had managed since their first meeting at Al Asad FOB.

It was with that friendship in mind that had Sam running around like a headless chicken once he received word of an ambush in Fallujah – he knew that Mick and his troop had been sent into the city along with US Special Forces for an operation earlier in the day.

He found his friend sitting down on a bench, staring intently at his hands that were covered in blood and Sam had a hard time telling if it was Mick's or someone else's.

"You ok?" he asked, his dry throat making his voice sound particularly gravelly.

"It's not mine," Mick said quietly, "Well, _most_ of its not mine," he conceded, sparing a glance towards a jagged wound on his upper right arm.

"Danny?" Sam asked needlessly. Mick was a popular man, for all that he was closed off about any and all things personal, and he had no shortage of friends in the military, but he and Danny were like brothers and Wallcroft was the only one likely to elicit such a devastated look from the Welshman – Sam hated to think what losing the man would do to Mick

"We were in the city – Intel had insurgents going after a school, a suspected bombing, only we didn't know which school so we were going around trying to evacuate them all. We didn't have enough people and the bomb went off. So did another one at a mosque and another one at a police station and another one at the mayor's office. The Army helped ferry people to the hospitals and we got orders over the net to go to the one where they'd sent the mayor and the head of police – we were to move them to a secure location because apparently the Brass was worried about their deaths bringing further destabilisation to the area."

"We'd only just got there and…" Mick looked at Sam, his eyes damp but resolute about withholding the tears. "Those bastards used the explosions to get as many people into the hospital as possible – anyone they didn't kill with those first blasts, children and parents, police and local politicians, they were all there in one place for them to take out.

"An RPG blew the wall out opposite the entrance and Danny went down straight off. He caught some shrapnel in the gut from the explosion and there was a lot of blood. We retrieved him under cover-fire and I dumped a year's supply of Celox gauze and some morphine into him, but God, Coop, the _noises_ he was making and I couldn't do a _damn_ thing to help him!

"All around us there were bleeding civilians, some of them quite literally in pieces, crying and begging for us to help, but we had to go and get the mayor and the police chief, grab our wounded and go. US Marines were coming in to help the situation but until then we had our orders to get the VIPs to safety and leave the civilians behind."

Sam frowned, unsure of what to say or do – he thought saying anything about how he was just following orders could be seen as trite and more than a little tactless. He couldn't comfort him about Danny because he had absolutely no idea as to the severity of the wound and while hope was always welcome, false hope could be debilitating at the outcome and he knew Mick had never been a fan of meaningless platitudes.

"I know Army life isn't perfect, I've never been naïve enough to think otherwise, but I guess I always thought that saving innocent civilians would come before helping the corrupt local officials to safety," Mick shook his head, his anger causing his voice to waver in its intensity.

"The mayor's a White House favourite," Sam explained.

" _Bin Laden_ was a White House favourite once upon a time, too, back when the Soviets were invading Afghanistan, and look how that ended so I hardly think _that_ counts for much at the end of the day. God, I have _never_ been so angry at orders before!"

"You're always going to get orders you don't like, or ones you don't agree with," Sam pointed out the inevitability. "You're a soldier, Mick, and more often than not that entails following orders."

"Yeah, that excuse went down great in Nuremberg, too," the sniper scoffed. He went to run his hands through his hair as he was wont to do when particularly agitated, but he caught sight of the blood once again and lowered his hands, releasing a heavy sigh of frustration. He closed his eyes and took a deep, shaky breath as he tried to calm himself. When he opened them again his gaze immediately went to the door hiding his oldest friend.

"I left the FBI when I got angry with the Brass," Sam said. He had never really talked about his time in the FBI – it was still one of the few subjects that was still largely unexplored between them, as was what had happened to Mick's family. But he didn't want his friend dwelling on the potential loss of another loved one and couldn't think of another topic that could distract his friend.

"You saying I should leave?" Mick asked, breaking his vigil to look questioningly at his friend.

"I'm just saying that it's a possibility," Sam shrugged. "Find something new to do with your life."

"Like you, you mean?" the Welshman said almost scornfully.

"Why not?"

"Because you never really left, did you Coop," Mick said rather astutely. "You seem to spend your time over here in penance for something you _think_ you did back there. And I don't buy for one second that you left because you were angry – you're the sort of person who likes to think things to death and by then anger has a habit of dying down somewhat."

"Depends on what got you angry in the first place," Sam suggested nonchalantly.

"Yeah, I'm not buying it. So why did you really leave?" Mick asked with an arched eyebrow. He had sensed Sam's loyalty, seen the very real evidence of it in the man's interactions with Hassan and himself – abandoning his friends and his duty in a fit of pique simply didn't ring true.

"For someone who hasn't had an ounce of training as a profiler you seem to be pretty much a natural at it," Sam laughed wryly, shaking his head. He didn't know why it kept on surprising him, having long ago learnt that there was a whole hell of a lot more to Mick than the man ever liked to show, but every time the younger man's intelligence came through he seemed to come to a stop. "You ever think about what you'll do once you leave the military?" Sam asked him curiously.

"Not really," Mick shrugged. To his credit, he didn't seem at all surprised by the non sequitur and carried on. "Never really thought about leaving."

"Really?" Sam was surprised.

"Come on, Coop," Mick sounded a tad exasperated. "I didn't even finish school, let alone go off to uni and get a degree – I'm hardly an employer's wet dream."

"But you're intelligent and…"

"So what?" Mick interrupted. "That doesn't mean anything unless you've got a little piece of paper to back it up, and I have _no_ intention of going back to school to _get_ that piece of paper. Besides, I think I'd go insane being stuck behind a desk all day – can you seriously imagine me answering phones and photocopying?"

"No," Sam replied honestly. Mick was not someone who liked to be in any one spot for too long. The man was a paradox, really – give him a nest and he'd spend three days as still as a statue doing nothing but watching his target through a scope, but make him sit down off duty for more than ten minutes and he was crawling out of his skin with boredom. "No," Sam repeated, "I think Health and Safety would try and stop you for the sake of everyone else's sanity," he joked. "But there is more to the working world than sitting behind a desk…"

"I know that. I _do_ actually work for a living too, mate," Mick pointed out wryly.

"But you could be so much _more_ than just a soldier," Sam tried to search for the right words, desperate as he was to make Mick understand that he had more to offer the world than his ability to use a rifle.

"I don't see it as being _'just a soldier'_ ," Mick replied, more than a little insulted, his exasperation turning towards irritation.

"No, I didn't mean…" Sam tried to interject but Mick was having none of it – his worry over his friend, his anger over his orders and his general frustration at the helplessness of it all took hold.

"I know people see the uniform and think we're nothing more than a bunch of idiots who couldn't hack it in academia, but some of the best people I know in the world are wearing this uniform and most of them have more common sense than the wankers in charge.

"We're making an _actual_ difference while the politicians and the diplomats and all those other highly educated people would rather talk about it from afar. We mere soldiers know these people better than anyone who studied Middle Eastern culture at university ever could – we know their customs and their language, their traditions and their resilience to all this shite the political intelligentsia inflicted on them from the safety of the White House and Downing Street.

"While those clever people on TV do roundtables and talk about how terrible this war is, _we're_ here to crawl through the burnt out remains of a town attacked by insurgents, to find the body parts strewn about the place from the latest suicide bombing and to rescue those left behind to pick up the pieces of their lives.

" _We_ know what it is to pull people from the mud and mire of a landslide, the aftermath of an earthquake and from rising floodwaters, setting up yet another refugee camp for yet another displaced populace. _We're_ the ones who have to be on the ground distributing aid to the desperate, sometimes desperately _violent_ people after the military big-wigs in the MOD and the DOD decide that civilian infrastructure is a perfectly viable target. _We're_ the ones who see each and every consequence of the actions perpetrated by the so-called educated men in charge, so most days I think being _'just a soldier'_ has a hell of a lot to say for itself!"

"Mick," Sam said softly. "Please, I didn't mean to sound so derogatory. I have been, for the most part, proud to wear this uniform too. Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo notwithstanding, I have seen some of the best work in the military done by the lowliest of grunts and most of _them_ don't have a Harvard degree either.

"I know the military means a lot to you, and I know you take a lot of pride in your abilities and comfort in your friends and I can assure you I don't give a damn about whether or not any of you finished your education – you've all done well enough without it as far as I can see. However, I still think that with a mind like yours, you should be doing something other than looking down the barrel of a gun. I don't know why you seem to think so little of yourself," Sam shook his head in dismay. "Anything to do with your abilities as a soldier and you're damn near cocky, but for the rest of it…" he trailed off, not sure what to say.

"You're an intelligent young man, and a compassionate one, a highly capable man and a damn good one, but you're still a _young_ man. We've known each other off and on for a few years now and I really don't want to see you leave this world ahead of your time, fighting a seemingly endless war far from home. You have so much more to offer the world than your ability to shoot someone between the eyes from half a mile away."

"I can shoot further than that," Mick grumbled with half-hearted indignation.

"And there's that ego," Sam pointed out. "So why can't you be as confident with the rest of it?"

"Come on, Coop," Mick sighed, exasperatedly. "The military is all I know, unless you want me to put my street skills to the test – pickpocketing and lock-picking, theft and trespassing. Hell, maybe I could become a regular old Fagin and have a bunch of orphans running all over the city doing it _for_ me."

"You could never use someone in such a fashion!" Sam stated firmly, half smiling at the absurdity of it.

"I'm no angel, Coop. I ran drugs and stole money from struggling single mothers and kids half my age when I was on the streets. I had a certain moral flexibility back then that I'm not entirely convinced I'll _ever_ escape.

"There's more to being a good sniper than knowing how to shoot – you need to be fully prepared to pull the trigger and not give a damn about the consequences. It's different than being on the ground with your assault rifle – then when you fire you're normally reacting, shooting _back_ at those who opened fire on you. The RoE's can be pretty fluid at times, but mostly, they tell us we can only fire back at those shooting at us.

"It's not the same as a sniper – there you get your target, and then you kill them, without them firing one bullet in your direction, without even knowing you're _there_ most of the time. Often, you might be watching them before they're even green-lit as a target – hell, sometimes _you're_ the one who _makes_ them a target! You get to know them better than their own mother by the end of it, and more often than not you see the good in them, too – you see them give a kid in the compound their last bit of rice, pet the mangy dog despite the fleas, laugh and joke with his men and treat the village elder with the respect he deserves. You see a whole person and not just the enemy.

"There are a lot of people who can't take the shot after watching their target acting like a normal, decent human being for three days straight. I'm _not_ one of those people, Coop. Don't make me into something I'm not," he warned his friend.

"I know you're not an angel, Mick," Sam agreed. "But I also know you're not the Devil. Trust me, I've met more than a few men without a conscience to guide them in my time and you're _nothing_ like them. You're damaged, no doubt, but then there are few of us who are completely unscathed. Damaged, sure, but you're not _broken_ , Mick."

"Well, maybe there we'll just have to agree to disagree," Mick shrugged, unpersuaded. He had long ago convinced himself that he _was_ broken, that there was nothing in the world that could ever make him feel like a normal person again. For a time he had tried to experience that normality vicariously through his sister, but that had only served to remind him just how far he was from that reality, and the sense of estrangement he felt from Jenna at those times was more potent than any sense of longing he might once have held.

"You've really never thought about leaving the army?" Sam asked, almost incredulously after a long moment of uncomfortable silence.

"That surprises you? Really?" Mick asked, genuinely perplexed by the profiler's reaction. "The Army gave me my first real home since I lost my parents. It was a roof over my head, food in my stomach, money in my pocket and a brother at my side. Danny helped me pick myself back up off the ground through basic and he's stood by my side ever since – all the shit we've gone through and he's never once wavered. The OCs pushed me to better myself at more than just my shooting and they managed to keep me in check without resorting to breaking an arm or rupturing a kidney.

"It gave me a home and it gave me a purpose and it gave me as close to a family as I reckon I'll ever get again. None of that is an easy thing to consider losing, especially by your own hand."

Coop nodded quietly. He'd always suspected that Mick saw the army and its occupants as a pseudo-family, but due to the man's stoic nature and incredible poker face he had never been sure as to the depths of those feelings before.

"So, I reckon fair is fair, tit for tat and all that," Mick said as he leaned back in his chair and scrubbed at his tired eyes. He tried to ignore Danny's blood under his fingernails and staining his clothes and instead chose to focus on the man next to him. "Why did you _really_ leave the BAU?"

"Like a dog with a bone, huh?" Sam asked dryly.

"Like you're one to talk, mate. Now, I may not be a profiler but I've gone through my interrogation training all the same and I can spot evasion as well as the next soldier, so…no more avoiding and answer the damn question, if you please," he smiled at his friend to take any sting out of his words.

"Imagine a world where there's no light at the end of the tunnel, only darkness," Sam started off somewhat poetically. "That's what the world felt like by the time I left the BAU – dark and dangerous and impossibly hopeless."

"Surely it can't have felt like that _all_ the time, otherwise why stick at it for so long?" Mick wondered.

"It didn't, not at first. I was there almost from the beginning, helping to establish it as it is now, at any rate. I was so proud," Sam laugh with derision. "I thought, naively so, that we'd see a reduction in the type of crimes we specialised in, but it never happened. If anything, we ended up getting more and more cases passing across our desks, more and more police officers and agents desperate for our help, more and more bodies in the ground.

"It got to the point where we had to start turning down people who were asking for our help because we simply didn't have the manpower to cover them all. Of course, the Brass, in all its infinite wisdom, decided that what we needed next was a budget cut, which meant we had even less time and fewer resources than before to work our way through our case load.

"One of the worst things about it was the politics behind it all. Because the FBI Brass were so determined not to step on anyone's toes, so eager not to offend anyone, the BAU had to wait to be _invited_ onto a case. Which meant that we might be sitting in our office between cases and we've seen a pattern and come up with an initial profile, but we can't _do_ anything because we have to wait until someone asks us – I hate to think how many people died simply because the officer or agent in charge waited too long to call us in.

"By the end of it all, I was so angry, so disillusioned and so resigned to the fact that we were _always_ going to be too late that I'd forgotten all the reasons why I'd wanted to work in the BAU in the first place," Sam trailed off sadly.

There was a long moment of silence as both men sunk into their thoughts – Mick on what he'd heard and Sam on what he'd given up so long ago. The young Welshman decided to try and talk some sense into the American, bewildered by the way Coop could call _him_ up onto the carpet for his bullshit and yet fail to see when he was wallowing in his own mire of self-worth issues.

"I'm not trying to belittle what you felt about it all, but surely you can't believe the BAU _increased_ the number of serial killers?" Mick asked tentatively, almost incredulously.

"Of course not!" Sam fired back, his emotions about that particular chapter of his past still too raw to invite calm, rational thinking.

"Then why the guilt I see plastered all over your face?" Mick demanded, equally as unforgiving in his tone. "So you got more cases, more people were asking for help, surely that just means that you and the rest of the BAU proved a useful tool in catching the sick bastards! As to more bodies, that's not always a bad thing. Back in the UK, we've still got victims we _know_ are dead and buried, but we don't have a body – can you imagine what that _does_ to the family? More bodies doesn't necessarily mean more deaths, it could just mean that you've found them before they're nothing but bone fragments and dust.

"I mean, I can't believe that America has all of a sudden got ten times more serial killers and serial rapists and all those other sick sons of bitches you hunt down than you had twenty years ago. The more likely reality is that because of the BAU, because of your training and your understanding of these people, law enforcement is better at spotting patterns, better at narrowing down suspects and dump sites and methodology. And if that's the case, then you shouldn't feel _guilty_ , Sam, you should feel _proud_!"

"I probably should," Sam agreed with a cynical smile.

"But you don't," Mick pointed out needlessly. "Why not?"

"I bailed on it, didn't I?" Sam shrugged, as if that explained everything.

"You don't strike me as the kind of guy who'd bail for nothing, Coop," Mick said with conviction in his voice.

"Colby Holme," Sam confessed softly after silently debating with himself about whether or not he could reveal the whole truth.

"Who's that? One of your UnSubs?" Mick asked.

"No," Sam shook his head sadly, before reaching into his pocket and pulling out his wallet. He handed over a photo of a young boy – it was curled at the edges and the general wear and tear suggested to Mick that his friend had been repeatedly punishing himself by forcing himself to look at the picture and endure whatever self-recriminations it produced.

"I was working a case with a couple of other agents. We had five dead boys and we worked the profile and that eventually lead us to a guy who confessed to all five murders, but we knew…we _knew_ he wasn't responsible for them all because the preference was too varied and it just didn't fit. But gut instincts don't count for much and the local cops shut down the investigation, satisfied that they'd got their man, and then the FBI brass demanded that we come home. So we did, reluctantly and full of apprehension, worried that the case wasn't really over, but we had our orders and no real evidence, so we headed back to Quantico.

"It might have been different if I'd been working a case, helping someone _somewhere_ , but it was a rare lull and I was at the Bureau just waiting to be called in on another case. Hotchner, one of the other agents, he’d had been called away to a case in Denver, I think, and that's when I got the call. Colby Holme," Sam said, choking on his emotion as he pointed to the photo still in Mick's hold, "was the little boy who was killed by the second offender that we _knew_ was out there. Local cops found him dumping Colby's body in the woods.

"I was so angry at the Brass for calling us away before the case was done, furious at the ridiculous system that has us waiting for a phone call before we're even allowed to help, and mostly, I was pissed off with myself because I _knew_ the profile didn't work with only one offender and yet I ignored my gut, listened to the Brass and Colby Holme paid the price.

"I couldn't stay after that, not after Colby," Sam said firmly, his eyes moist with unshed tears and guilt.

"You _do_ know that it wasn't your fault, right Coop?" Mick almost begged. "If you had no leads, no evidence to lead you to the second offender then the chances of you catching him before he killed someone else…"

"Slim, I know," Sam said bitterly. "I guess when kids are involved you sort of lose your rational side."

"You know one of my first confirmed kills in country was a kid," Mick said quietly, looking intently at his bloodied hands in an effort to avoid eye contact.

"I’m sorry Mick," Sam offered. "That must have been hard but I know you, Mick, and if you took that shot then I'm sure you had a reason."

"I did," Mick agreed. "He had an AK and was firing at the Joint Taskforce. We'd hit an IED and started taking enemy fire, we had two dead and three injured and we were taking mortar fire, too – it was a shit day all round," Mick smiled grimly. "We needed to move to a more secure location and so we laid down suppressive-fire. Naturally, as the high man I was ordered to cover the rest as they carried the injured to safety. I looked down my sights and the first thing I see is a kid, maybe twelve, thirteen, but certainly not much older, and he was firing away at the convoy, not even flinching at the return-fire coming in at him. And I shot him."

"I can't imagine that was easy," Sam tried to console his friend.

"It wasn't," Mick agreed. "Fucked me up something fierce.

"But you _had_ to shoot him, Mick," the profiler stated.

"Did I? I'm one of the best snipers in the world and I could have injured him, shot the gun out of his hands, taken out one of his knees…"

"That's not how we're trained," Sam disagreed, desperately trying to ease his friend’s pain. "We go for the kill shot for a reason, to make sure that _we're_ safe. How much longer does it take to line up a shot where the intention _isn't_ to kill? If you tried to wound him and he still went for his weapon and started shooting at the convoy again, how many lives would have been at risk, how many people could he have shot? You can't play the _'what if'_ game, Mick. It doesn't do anyone any favours."

"So why are you playing it with Colby Holme?" Mick asked, finally looking his friend in the eyes.

"That's a dirty trick," Sam pointed out with eyes narrowed at his friend, irritated that his own words were being used to prove him wrong.

"Look, some things are always going to stick with you," Mick said, under no illusions that he'd managed to convince his friend he was not to blame. "And you're right, kids tend to make it all seem so much worse. But at the end of the day, Coop, you weren't the one to kill Colby, the UnSub was, so if you want to be angry with someone then blame the sick son of a bitch who killed Colby.

"And if you needed to get away from the BAU for a while to rediscover some vestige of humanity in the world, then I hardly think anyone can blame you – it sounds like a rough job at the _best_ of times. But you didn't end the BAU, Coop, it's still running, catching the bad guys and helping out the police across the States. You helped set it up and what's running today is down to you and the other agents like you who saw a need for something like that – whatever else, that's something you should be proud of."

"You'd make a good profiler," Sam said after several minutes of silence. "You're good at reading people and getting in their head."

"I'm not sure I want to be in your head, Coop. I think it's even more fucked up than mine," Mick joked.

"I don't think I'd go _that_ far," Sam disagreed with a laugh. "Thanks, though," he said with sincerity as he looked at his young friend. "I don't really talk about it much, and generally try to avoid it as much as I can but I think you've managed the impossible."

"The impossible?" Mick queried.

"By getting me to talk about it. I don't really do the whole shrink thing," Sam confessed. "I know my job at the BAU probably sounds like I spent my days reading Freud and Jung, espousing the benefits of psychiatry, but honestly, I never could stand talking to shrinks."

"Me neither, mate, can't blame you there. Although it might explain why neither one of us is exactly the most well-balanced of individuals," Mick pointed out wryly.

Sam was about to reply when the doctor exited the room holding Danny. Mick shot up and any sign of his previous levity was lost in a heartbeat.

"Is he ok?" Mick asked tentatively, hope and dread warring within.

"He's lost a lot of blood but we think we've managed to contain that. We've repaired the damage but obviously we'll need to keep a close eye on him and make sure we didn't miss anything – he had a lot of shrapnel in his gut and some it was pretty damn small, so there is that risk. All that debris also means he’s still at risk of infection, but we’ve cleaned it out as best we can and got him on some antibiotics. We want to get some more blood in him and stabilise his blood pressure before we think about sending him back home on a long flight, but on the whole the prognosis looks good and we're cautiously optimistic for a full recovery."

"I'm O negative," Mick offered as he let out a huge sigh of relief. "That's universal donor, right? I can donate a couple of pints. Can we see him?"

"I'm not going to let you in there, especially looking like that," the army doctor pointed out the mud and blood that caked the young soldier's hands and clothes. "He's resting, he's being well looked after and right now he's looking a damn sight better than you. I'll have someone see to that arm and once we have a clue as to the wound's severity, _then_ we'll see whether or not you'll be up to giving us any blood," the doctor said pointedly. "We only like to take one pint and if you're all good then I'll have a nurse set it up, but after that… _rest_!"

"That's you told," Sam smiled as the doctor headed outside, his own relief palpable in the way his breath finally felt as though it wasn't catching on anything at every inhale. "You and Danny, between you…nine lives, I swear."

"If only those lives were a little less exciting," Mick said tiredly. Now that he knew Danny was going to be ok, he felt his own fatigue seeping in.

"That bothering you?" Sam asked, gesturing towards the wound on his arm.

"Nah, it's barely a scratch," Mick shrugged off his concern.

"You'd say that if the arm was hanging off," Sam said almost accusingly.

"Come on, you know I've had worse. This is nothing."

"I hate to think what it'd take for you to think it was something," Sam shook his head in dismay. Mick had long since been a friend and Sam had accepted the man, faults and all, but there were times that the profiler wished his young Welsh friend had a better sense of self-preservation.

"You already know what _'something'_ is like," Mick said, gesturing towards the closed doors of Danny's makeshift hospital room. "I suppose I should get this seen to, because if I don't go now I swear to God, I'll fall asleep right here."

"Alright, sit down and I'll go see if I can find a doctor."

"Coop," Mick called after his retreating friend. "Thanks, for everything. I know you only told me what you did because you didn't want me focusing on what was going on in there," he gestured towards the closed doors that hid his best friend. "I appreciate it."

"I told you because you're my friend and I trust you," Sam countered. Mick merely raised an eyebrow which caused the older man to laugh sheepishly. "A natural-born profiler, I keep telling you," he shook his head amusedly. "I'm just glad it helped."

"Me too," Mick agreed. "Maybe one day I'll be able to return the favour."

"You already did," Sam said quietly, leaving before Mick could ask what he meant.

* * *

Sam observed Mick as he watched the needle go in and out of his skin, pulling the jagged edges together – he winced, but otherwise made no further sign of his discomfort.

"So where are you off to after this?" Sam asked, once again trying to distract the man from his pain. He was aware that Mick might not be able to give him a straight answer due to the often covert nature of his job, but at least it started a topic that neither one of them should be uncomfortable with.

"Back to the UK, mate," Mick smiled tiredly. "Nine whole months on home turf. We're on CT rotation, so it will be pretty relaxed – lots of tea, I'm told."

"CT rotation?" Sam queried.

"Well, you know about the massacre at the '72 Olympics in West Germany? The one where the Black September terrorist group killed all of those people?" Mick asked and waited for Sam to nod. "Well, after that, word is that Heath, the Prime Minister at the time, wanted to create a unit that would be able to respond to an incident like that on British soil. So they created the Special Projects Team.

"Basically, it's a counter-terrorist group inside the SAS, trained in anti-hijacking, CQB, siege-breaking, hostage rescue, and the like. The squadrons rotate through the duty and go through refreshers on the training every 15 months or so. They sometimes work abroad but the basis of it is that there's always someone on home ground to take care of any issues that crop up.

"Five years after it was created, there was the siege in the Iranian embassy, so that kind of confirmed the need for it and negated any ideas about it being a waste of funding. And now here we are," Mick shrugged.

"So you'll have an easy time of it then," Sam ventured.

"Hopefully," Mick nodded. "Although with the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, and Al Qaeda and the aftermath of 7/7, the current threat level is rated as severe, so who knows. We'll be doing some training with Special Branch and the Met. no doubt, but on the whole, I'm not really sure what to expect except for a whole load more training and working with other national security branches."

"It'll be nice for you to be that much closer to Jenna, though, right?" Sam asked.

"I guess," Mick agreed.

"You guess?" Sam queried, puzzled by his friend's discomfort.

"You know what we were saying earlier, about being broken?"

"I'm pretty sure I said you _weren't_ broken," Coop clarified.

"Well, even if you want to leave it at damaged…" Mick shrugged. "I don't know. It's just, she got her new family and they take care of her and love her and she loves them, even if I don't understand that last part myself. It seems like every time I come back into her life it's because of something bad. She's so…" he scrabbled for the right word. "She's _normal_ and I feel like I'm always fucking things up for her – I don't want to be the one responsible for damaging _her_!"

"You don't think she's old enough to make her own mind up about that?" Sam suggested.

"Maybe," Mick shrugged. He didn't think it would matter to him how old she was, she would _always_ be his little sister and he would _always_ want to protect her, even from himself. "She’s finished uni now, got herself a job and an apartment and a life. I don’t want to upset the applecart."

"Your sister is smart, almost as smart as you are, and while I don't know the particulars, I would hazard a guess and say that the reason she isn't already as damaged as you is because you protected her, even back then when you were just a kid yourself," Sam guessed, and was pretty sure he'd hit the nail on the head when he saw Mick flinch slightly at wherever his thoughts had taken him.

"You want me to let go of Colby Holme? Then you work on letting go of your past. I'm here, ready to listen, anytime you need me," Sam offered quietly.

"One day, Coop," Mick stated wryly. "You'll wear me down in this war of attrition you've got going with my demons."

"We can only hope," Sam said sincerely.

* * *

** VIP ** **_–_ ** ** Very Important Person ** **_._ **

** Guantanamo ** **_– a section of Cuba occupied by a US Naval Base._ ** **Guantanamo Bay _is the site of the infamous prison set up in 2002 that was to house any deemed to be particularly dangerous to the US. Torture has only been confirmed on one detainee but is suspected to be far more wide-spread – regardless, the methods used there have received worldwide condemnation._**

** CT ** **_–_ ** ** Counter-Terrorism ** **_._ **

** 7/7 ** **_– the bombings that occurred in London on the transport system on the 7th July, 2005._ **

** Special Branch ** **_– part of the Police Force, they acquire and utilise intelligence to protect the State from actual and perceived threats, especially in relation to terrorism._ **

** The Met ** **_– nickname for the_ ** ** Metropolitan Police ** **_, who police Greater London (the City of London Police cover, not surprisingly, the City of London or the "Square Mile") and are involved in counter-terrorism and protection of high-ranking officials, including the Royal Family._ **


	13. Chapter 13

Sam had never prayed so fiercely, but still the bullets continued to impale the nearby vehicles and buildings. The US Marines around him were shouting out, trying to be heard by their teammates over the continuous staccato of gunfire, desperate to find a way out of the kill zone.

It _should_ have been a simple mission – a Chinook had been shot down nearby, heading back to base after dropping off a small recon team, and while the bodies of two crew members had been recovered, the pilot and a door gunner were still unaccounted for. Images picked up from C130s and satellite coverage had not turned up much, and the terrain was much too rough for vehicles to easily traverse off the roughly hewn tracks. It was generally believed that the men were likely being held in the local region – a mass of rocky crags and crevices that could provide plenty of shelter for anyone who did not want to be seen from above.

There was a local tribal leader who had largely ignored the war as best as he could, but the Americans were desperate to get him on board as few had such knowledge of the local area, an area crawling with the Taliban group suspected of holding the US soldiers.

Sam had been brought in by Military Intelligence in the belief that an experienced interrogator trained in Psy. Ops. might well be the only way to get the recalcitrant leader to change his mind and join the war on their side. He'd barely spent ten minutes talking to the tribal elder before all hell broke loose – apparently, the US military were not the only group looking to secure the loyalty of the local tribal leader.

Satellite imagery and recent local intelligence indicated little enemy movement in the area, and so a smaller force was sent in an effort to be discreet – only three Humvees had entered the small hamlet and all of them were beyond repair. The remains of the lead vehicle were blocking half of the only road out of there and the smell of burning rubber was strong and noxious – Sam was grateful for it, however, as it at least somewhat masked the smell of the bodies that were still trapped inside the fiery, mangled husk of the Humvee. The other two vehicles had escaped the grenade but not the small arms fire – the insurgents had aimed for the engines and the drivers, effectively cutting off a vehicular escape.

Sergeant Wilkes, Bravo Team's leader, was by Cooper's side, using his not inconsiderable body mass to push the intelligence expert further into the dirt. From his prone position, Sam could make out the bodies of at least three Marines. He knew that two of them were dead, but he could hear the ragged breathing of the third – the death rattle indicated that the soldier didn't have much time left.

He closed his eyes, unable to watch the spectacle play out before him. He'd been in the military too many years, seen too many deaths, too many young men and women who'd had their lives ripped away from them in the most traumatic of circumstances.

He'd done his best to distance himself from most of the soldiers after only a couple of years, unable to see any more of his friends die from bullets and grenades, IEDs and RPGs. There were still those who slipped through the carefully constructed walls, of course – Mick Rawson had seemingly managed to slip past every defence Sam had fought so hard to maintain, and the dangerous nature of Special Forces often had the profiler's imagination running into overdrive.

He couldn't say what it was that had first allowed the young Welshman to slip by his defences, but he suspected that a large part of it was to do with an underlying sense of vulnerability in the man. Mick could be cocky as hell, especially in regards to his abilities as a soldier – he was one of the best snipers in the world, more than adept at bomb disposal and a natural tactician, and in the heat of battle he was cool, calm and collected, courageous and fiercely protective. But underneath all that there was a wary young man who had suffered much throughout his life.

A sudden searing pain cut Sam from his thoughts, but with Wilkes still pushing him into the dirt, trying to shield his body as much as possible, he was unable to assess the injury. He tried to move and the pain lanced through him at the speed of light, his short sharp cry alerted Wilkes to the problem.

"Shit!" he exclaimed. "They're trying to flank us," he informed the men as he estimated the trajectory from Cooper's injury. He dragged the man behind a low wall and dug through his webbing for a field-bandage. "Cooper, look at me!" he ordered fiercely, giving the profiler a short, sharp tap on one cheek.

Sam blinked through eyelids that suddenly seemed all too heavy. The pain was immense and yet he also felt an increasing distance from it. The encroaching sense of oblivion was terrifying in its potency but Sam was struggling to focus on Wilkes's face, even as it loomed above him.

"That's right," Wilkes nodded, in near panic at the way a simple operation had turned into such a clusterfuck in the mere blink of an eye, mind already stuck on how many of his friends would be in body-bags at the day’s end. "Just keep your eyes open and look at me. We're going to get out of here," he promised the injured man.

Wilkes was a good soldier, but he was an untested leader – he had never been in a situation where everything fell to him and to him alone. They had been ambushed, caught unawares, and the casualty rate was already dramatically high for Bravo Team's relatively small numbers, and now all who were left were dependent upon his leadership – the very idea was almost soul-crushing in its intensity.

He ordered the men to spread out along the limited cover they had, desperate to utilise those still standing in the best possible way. Every available corner, low-lying wall and even the shabby well were providing some measure of cover for the remaining Marines, all alert for any movement. However, with the adrenaline dying down, Wilkes knew he was going to have to start organising watches.

He wanted to make his way to the two remaining Humvees to salvage what he could from the vehicles that hadn't already been taken as they'd scrambled for cover – ammo, MRE's, and water were the fundamental necessities. The 50 Cal. on one of the Humvees was out of commission but Wilkes wanted to take the ammo box from the remaining gun – if the weapon was going to be used, it was going to be aimed _by_ a Marine, not _at_ a Marine.

The moment there was a lull in the fighting he moved. He could do nothing for the dead in his team, however, wrapped around the bodies of his dead men, his _friends_ , were assault rifles, side-arms and webbing full of ammo, food and basic medical supplies. Collecting them was a rather morbid task, one he tried to do without looking into the faces of the men he felt he had failed, but Wilkes was quick and efficient, reliant upon his men to cover his six as he did what he could to salvage the terrible circumstances they found themselves in, unsure of how long they would need to hold out and how many they were facing.

The locals, terrified at being seen to cooperate with the Americans having long since heard what happened to collaborators, had all but barred their doors, leaving the wounded men to lie, dazed and in pain outside, behind whatever cover the small hamlet afforded them.

The surrounding landscape was rocky and uneven, providing the Taliban with plenty of hiding places, easy enough to duck down behind and avoid the incoming fire, and the contours allowed for plenty of unseen manoeuvring to occur.

Wilkes had ordered them to conserve their ammo as much as they could, and finally feeling as though he had Bravo Team as ready and prepared as they could be for a full-scale attack, he slowly made his way back to the remaining Humvees, hugging the ground as close as he could without resorting to actual crawling.

The first Humvee he came to yielded little success, the radio shattered by previous bullet fire, but the one at the rear of the convoy was relatively intact. He gingerly moved the dead body in the driver's seat that was draped over the radio – he hated it, the thought that immediately surfaced and refused to die, but Chavez’s body, slumped over the dash like that, had probably saved the radio, could well have secured their only chance at calling for immediate support.

Unfortunately, he heard nothing over the net that gave him much hope. They were not risking an extraction by air, as the downed Chinook meant that the Taliban clearly had anti-aircraft guns somewhere in the area. The rough terrain meant that there was only one way into the small hamlet, and reconnaissance from a circling plane showed relatively heavy enemy presence, which meant that securing any land exfil. would take time.

Wilkes had been told that there was a group of British Special Forces in the area, but what they were doing and how near or far they were doing it was not imparted, but he imagined it could well be a search and rescue party – the best, and most likely, the _only_ way to find the missing airmen would be a recce mission carried out on foot amongst the jagged landscape by those who knew what they were about, and the SAS certainly knew what they were about.

The Sergeant's best hope was that either the UKSF had heard the shots as the echoes cracked their ways through the mountainous region, and were already making their way towards their position, or that he and his Marines could hold out against the Taliban long enough for Allied forces to secure the road and send up reinforcements.

They had been holding their own for almost two hours before they heard the new shots – shots that were not aimed at them and definitely didn't come from the Taliban weapon-of-choice, the AK47. In fact, it sounded very much like a C8 Carbine, a UKSF weapon-of-choice, and Wilkes almost sagged with the relief that there was help on hand.

It took another half-hour before someone called out that friendlies were coming in from the East and to hold fire in that sector – Wilkes ordered everyone watching that quadrant to stand down while everyone else offered cover fire to those coming in.

The Sergeant was dismayed that there were only five men, but from what little he knew of the SAS, they often worked in teams of around four, especially on reconnaissance missions, so he was not surprised. He looked at the uniforms, trying to identify the man in charge, but all of the uniforms had been sanitised with no hint of rank and file.

"We heard the shots," one man informed him.

"And you thought you'd join the party?" Wilkes replied with a smile, all too sure that the palpable relief was apparent for everyone involved.

"Well, we were in the area and we didn't want you to have all the fun," the man smirked back. "Manx, at your disposal, or Rothers – take your pick," the officer said, all too aware that while _he_ might be relatively lax when it came to rank and file, others were not.

"Sergeant Wilkes," he offered a quick hand and felt that it all seemed a little too casual given that there was still incoming fire and little cover, but he was too grateful and too proud not to play along and pretend that he was calm and capable in the situation.

"Well, you've done a damn good job setting up your perimeter," Manx added. "If your men can hold on while we see what else we can do…" he trailed off, not wanting to give the man an order but making sure it was understood that his suggestion was to be followed. He outranked the American in front of him, but he was in the British Army while Wilkes was in the US Navy and that was reason enough for any unease when it came to who had ultimate authority in any given situation, not to mention his dislike of pulling rank even when he could.

Wilkes was more than happy to let someone else deal with the clusterfuck they found themselves in and swiftly ordered his men to resume their watch, keeping it at one hundred percent. He was glad to see the other four SAS men had also sought cover and were keeping watch over their CO – five more soldiers wasn't a lot in the grand scheme of things, but it was enough to ease the burden somewhat.

"Can you make it down the mountain on foot?" Manx added, looking at the battle-weary men around him with a certain degree of certainty that his question was not going to be met with a positive answer.

"Not a chance," Wilkes shook his head. "We've got too many injured, not to mention all the dead – I don't think I could stomach leaving them here with the Taliban ready to swoop in and use their bodies for the latest recruitment drive."

Manx nodded – _'leave no man behind'_ was an excellent idea in theory, but it wasn't always feasible in practise, especially in regards to Spec. Ops. and while he too felt that the retrieval of the dead soldiers was an important task, he had to prioritise and the needs of the living were much more important.

"Where are the worst off?" Manx asked. "We can at least give them what medical supplies we have left. If we need to move, it will probably have to be fast – they'll need to be in as fit a state as we can get them."

"They’re down there, behind the wall. Other than those who died in the initial explosion, we've already had one soldier bleed out but the rest of the injuries are relatively minor and they should be able to hold out for a few more hours, provided the shock doesn't get them first. Cooper, a guy from Intel., took a bullet to the leg and he's lost a fair amount of blood but he's still conscious – he's probably the worst off right now."

" _Sam_ Cooper?" asked one of the other British soldiers. "Big black guy with a near permanent frown and the constant stench of Catholic guilt?"

"That's him," Wilkes laughed a little at the accurate albeit not altogether kind character depiction.

"Bollocks!" the soldier exclaimed quietly. "Manx?"

"Go check him out," the older man allowed. "See what you can do for him." He turned back to Wilkes and asked about radio communication, relieved to find out that help was on the way – they just had to hold out until that help actually arrived.

The SAS trooper was crouching low and headed towards the temporary shelter for the injured when another volley of gunfire erupted, splintering through the wood and stone around them.

"Danny? Cover me!" Mick shouted as he ran through a hail of bullets to reach his friend. He could see the bodies of several Marines, already beyond help – the smell of burning flesh almost made him gag, dredging up memories of that ill-fated day several years ago that saw him end up a helpless POW.

He shook his head quickly, as if trying to physically dislodge the thoughts. Sam needed him present and focused – he was no good to anyone if he let himself get caught up in bad memories.

Finally, he made it to the low wall that was hiding his friend from the worst of the incoming fire. Sam was propped up, his head still hidden from view, but raised slightly in an effort to fight off shock. His eyes were open, but unfocused, his hands slick with blood as they lay uselessly at the side of the bullet-wound.

"Hey there, mate," Mick said quietly as he reached his friend. He carefully examined the bandaged leg and saw that the wrapping was already soaked through. He took out his own field-bandage and wrapped it tightly around the one already in place, mumbling quiet reassurances to his near insensible friend as he did so.

He didn't have any more supplies on him, having already used the rest of his small medley of medical supplies earlier in the day, besides, he didn't think giving Coop any morphine would do much to help – the man was nearly oblivious to the pain by now but he was struggling to remain conscious and alert. He wasn't sure _why_ he wanted Sam to cling so desperately to painful consciousness under the circumstances, but Mick supposed it was an instinctual need, a tacit correlation between staying awake and staying alive.

"We need to move," Mick informed Manx, who had made his way to the low-lying wall with Wilkes in toe, ducking quickly to avoid the incoming fire. "We don't have nearly enough shelter here and our field of view is almost none existent," he pointed out needlessly.

The smoke from the burning Humvee was already limiting their vision and the bullet-riddled husks of the other two vehicles covered one too many alleys, hiding the insurgents' movement with little difficulty. The low-lying wall was not very long, having long ago fallen into disrepair, and the shots were increasingly coming from the side.

"They're trying to flank us and we're too much out in the open here, Manx" Danny called out. "We need to move!"

"We can't go into the buildings – we'd not just endanger the civilians but we’d get ourselves trapped," Manx replied, frustration barely hidden, as his mind worked through their options.

"Then we need to move back into the mountains," Danny replied with certainty. "There was that small cavern we passed not too far from here and I don't think we want to corner ourselves there either unless things get really desperate, but with the number of ravines and overhangs in the area we can find _somewhere_ with better cover than this!"

Manx lowered himself further down to the ground and pulled out the silk map of the area – he'd added a few notations already on their recent recce mission and was trying to work out the best place to go and settle in for the long haul.

They had been out in the mountains with nine men, two teams of four with him leading the op., trying to map out the rough terrain as best as they could and see if they could track down any sight of the missing airmen while they were at it. They'd come across a lot of activity just to the North of the Pakistani border and suspected that the missing soldiers may well have been taken over the boundary – they didn't have clearance to go over the border yet, but Manx imagined a covert op. may well be close at hand.

The border was always a dangerous place to be – the Taliban used the Allied Forces inability to cross over without threatening Pakistani sovereignty as a means of protection. That meant that the mountainous terrain along the border was awash with enemy combatants, hiding in amongst the caves and ravines as they moved from Afghanistan to Pakistan under cover of night, aware that permission needed to be sought by their pursuers at the risk of an international incident.

The small group of soldiers had followed tracks to the southern border of Kandahar before relaying their findings. They had been ordered to keep an eye on the border for a few more days, making exploratory excursions into the local landscape, and trying to figure out where in the area the Taliban were holing up and where they were crossing the border.

It was a fine plan in theory, but on the barren landscape movement was easy to track and not just for the Allied Forces – they'd been watching the border for three days when finally one of the teams were spotted.

It had been sheer bad luck rather than inexperience, that gave them away and two members of the team went down almost as soon as the first shot was fired. Dougal was still considered the FNG of the group but Manx was impressed that the former Black Watch soldier managed to hold it together as well as he had, swiftly offering cover fire to allow the other men to move in and help the wounded. Between the two teams they made a hasty retreat out of hostile territory.

Moving their way through the mountainside as quickly as injuries allowed managed to put something of a gap between them and their pursuers – the rugged landscape that so often served to hide the Taliban was finally acting as _their_ camouflage. As soon as they could, they huddled down and saw to the wounded before radioing in a situation report. It was there that they learned about the US Marines under-fire a few clicks to the West of their position.

Manx had made the decision to split the teams – Trigger was to lead Dougal down the mountain to a designated exfil. point, helping the two wounded men make their way down. He would lead Benn, Rawson, Wallcroft, and Harrigan to help out the besieged Marines.

They'd already used up most of their basic medical supplies on their own wounded and what they'd had left was used by the wounded Marines. They had been working recon, so they'd deliberately avoided conflict when and where they could, which meant that while they were still ok for ammo, they'd been travelling relatively lightly anyway. What worried Manx was that they had little food and water left – it would have been fine if they only needed to care for themselves, but they now had several hungry and thirsty Marines to worry about, too, with no clear idea of when help would arrive.

The incoming fire had shredded the water cans tied to the back of the vehicles and all that was left was what was in the canteens – they could fill them from the hamlet's well, but even so, if they were stuck in the mountains for more than a couple of days while further ground troops secured the route up for a medevac, they could run into difficulties. Thankfully, Wilkes had already thought ahead for food and had salvaged as many MREs as he could from the bullet-riddled vehicles and his fallen comrades – if the worst should happen, they could always go down to one square a day.

He turned to see Rawson giving Cooper a little water from his canteen and frowned. The interrogation expert looked more than a little worse for wear and Manx didn't much relish the idea of moving him over hard ground for any period of time – if the wound were to reopen there was only so much they could do in the barren landscape as underequipped as they were to deal with such injuries.

Another short burst of incoming fire reigned down upon them and Mick cried out with pain, before throwing himself down over Coop in an effort to shield the inert man. Somewhere, his cry of pain must have registered with Sam despite the noise of gunfire – although barely able to focus and certainly without any degree of coordination, he struggled under the weight of his friend as he tried to see the problem. The constant jostling about exacerbated Mick's pain, pulling on the injuries as Sam strived to remove himself from the safety of the Welshman's grip.

"Woah, calm down, Coop. Hey, Sam! Calm the fuck down!" he ordered the other man over the steady staccato of gunfire as he frantically pawed at him, searching for injury. "It hit the plate, see? It hit the plate," Mick repeated before gesturing to the piece of metal that protected his chest. "I might get a nasty bruise but other than that, I'm fine."

In truth, the bullet to the chest, while stopped by his Kevlar, had still been sorely felt. The force had been such that it had taken his breathe away and Mick was sure a bruise was going to be the least of it – if the painful pull across his chest at every breath was anything to go by, he suspected that he had, at the very least, cracked a rib or two.

The shoulder wound he had neglected to mention to Sam was nothing _too_ severe but it would unfortunately affect his ability to wield his assault rifle as effectively as he would like, but he could still shoot. With them being as outnumbered as they were, being able to shoot was an imperative.

"Rawson?" Manx shouted, and Mick didn't need to know the man well to hear the question in his voice.

"I'm fine, Manx," the sniper assured his current team leader. "A little beat up but nothing I can't cope with for now." Sometimes he hated being forced to voice his weaknesses in front of other soldiers, whether he knew them or not – he would not deny that every man had his pride and he more than most when it came to his occupation, but confessing to any inability, especially when out in the field, often felt like questioning any right he had towards soldiering, full stop.

However, he also knew, through experience as well as through common sense, that everyone needed to know their limits and their capabilities. Following the Hollywood route of brushing it off might lead to a more tense cinematic experience but in real life it usually just lead to bigger problems further down the road, especially when it was not just his _own_ life that depended on his well-being.

"We need to get moving!" Danny shouted out, frustration in every syllable – he was a spotter and there was little to spot due to the poor visibility afforded them by their current location.

"We're going to have to leave the bodies for now," Manx said, turning to Wilkes. "We're going to struggle with the injured as it is, and we can't spare any hands to haul the dead further into the mountains – we're going to need at least four men, unburdened, to cover our retreat."

"I understand," Wilkes nodded, his trembling voice on the verge of breaking. It was his first real tour in a position of authority and he felt like every life lost was weighing down on his shoulders.

"We'll come back for them asap, Wilkes – we'll try to see to it that they make it home, but we can't do it at the expense of the living. Rawson, I want you on point," Manx ordered the Welshman.

"I reckon I'd be better off helping to move one of the injured," Mick said quietly, gesturing to his bloodied shoulder. "I can shoot if need be but it would make more sense to have a full-bodied soldier out in front."

"Understood," the soldier nodded tersely. If he had a choice, he would have preferred Rawson on point every time, his training as a sniper meant that he scanned the area with a little more efficiency than most and his intelligence and assessing gaze had not yet let him down. "Wallcroft?"

"On it," the spotter agreed quickly, moving into position.

Manx grabbed the two other SAS men and set about sabotaging anything and everything that could be useful to the enemy. Before they destroyed the only working radio in the Humvees, they called in their current position, gave the coordinates for their immediate destination and updated the status report. Benn was carrying a portable radio and a satellite phone had been secured from Cooper's affects, so they were not wholly without comms.

All available equipment was stowed away in every pouch and pocket, secured to every strap and belt. Benn and Harrigan ran to the small well and filled up every canteen while those Marines still on their feet provided cover fire.

Some of the lesser injured had volunteered to fight through their own pain to move those who were unable to move unaided, freeing up the healthy to provide more cover fire and keep the enemy from taking down the rest of them.

"Come on, Coop," Mick said, trying to haul the barely conscious man to his feet, only to find the other man collapsing half way down. "Shit!" Mick muttered to himself – he was going to have to carry the man. He was fit and strong, current injuries aside, but Coop was tall and broad, and it was going to take a hell of a lot of effort to get him anywhere. However, they didn't have much choice, too many were injured and with the other members of the SAS troop acting as cover-guard Mick was left as the only one available.

Despite being wary about just how far he could carry Coop, he was silently grateful that the injured man would be in his charge – not only did he want to help protect his friend, but he also felt as though it was a small step towards somehow repaying the man for the kindness and concern that had always been so forthcoming over the years. Mick might not understand _why_ Cooper seemed to give a crap about him, and sometimes he found the man's concern for a fully-grown, highly-trained soldier as amusing as it could be irritating, but he couldn't deny that he was grateful for it nonetheless.

"Ok, Coop," Mick sighed heavily as he readied himself for the weight and the pain that would inevitably follow. "This is going to hurt me just as much as it's going to hurt you, so at least do me the courtesy of not throwing up down my back, ok mate?"

He didn't expect any response and so got to work on heaving Sam into a comfortable grip. The man's weight immediately pulled at his shoulder wound and the sudden deep breath he took told him that yes, he did indeed have, at the very least, one cracked rib.

"Bollocks," he spitted out through gritted teeth. "We're going to need to go over the finer points of duck and cover, I'm not sure I'll agree to haul your arse through the mountains a second time."

"Mick?" came a confused voice from behind, muffled by Mick's back.

"Hey Coop," Mick breathed out heavily as he started walking over the rough terrain, boxed in between Danny at the front, with a few more able-bodied soldiers stumbling wearily alongside him, and Benn and Harrigan who were bringing up the rear. Manx and Wilkes kept working their way up and down the line, offering help when and where it was needed.

It was slow work, but they eventually found themselves with a little distance between them and the Taliban-infested village. They had found a small crevice in the landscape and worked on getting the injured to the back while Wilkes and Manx set about marking out the cover positions.

"Here we go," Mick said as he gently set Sam down against the wall. "Don't try and tell me that I never take you anywhere nice," he joked.

"Mick?" Sam asked sluggishly, awareness seeping back in and with it a sense of panic at the sheer amount of disorientation he felt.

"Got it in one, mate," Mick replied with a smile, making sure to put his face fully within Sam's view before returning his attention to his friend's injury.

"You're bleeding," Sam managed to choke out, fingers reaching towards the blood that was pooling around Micks left shoulder.

"Thank fuck it's the other shoulder this time, hey? Not sure my right shoulder could take another battering," Mick joked, desperate to make light of his condition in an effort to get his friend's panic under control, but Sam continued to paw at him with a lack of co-ordination and his eyes struggling to focus on the man in front of him. "Hey, easy tiger, buy me a drink first, eh?"

"Need to…" Sam trailed off, swallowing around his dry throat with a greater degree of difficulty than he was used to, and giving up on speech when he realised that he was getting nowhere.

"I'll see to it as soon as I've got you sorted, so the quicker you start cooperating, Coop, the sooner I'll take a look at it," Mick promised, realising that Sam's concern for him was more prominent than it was for his own injury.

As soon as Mick had bandaged up his shoulder with a strip of his t-shirt, a great deal of difficulty, and a whole hell of a lot of cussing in Welsh, Sam seemed to relax somewhat, and Mick was, while not entirely happy, certainly confident enough to leave him in the care of the other injured soldiers.

He stood up and moved back to his gear, assembling his sniper rifle as he watched over the opening, quietly getting an update from his team leader. He liked Manx – the Isle of Man native could be pretty acerbic in his manner and enjoyed putting the FNGs through the wringer, but once they had proved themselves capable, they were treated like an equal, with respect and camaraderie.

"Mick?" a sleepy voice called for his attention.

"Hey, Coop," the Welshman smiled at his friend as he moved back into view, his rifle assembled. "I won't be far but I reckon this," he gestured to his rifle, "might just keep the wolves at bay a little longer. Manx tells me that the cavalry is making short work of the Taliban – there are a lot of them, but apparently not enough to take on half of your 1st Battalion, and they're running scared for the hills. Of course, that means they could end up running _this_ way…" Mick trailed off.

It perhaps wasn't the most comforting of notions, given the circumstances, but he wasn't going to lie to Coop, not even as semiconscious as the man was – he owed the man the truth, at the very least and more besides, certainly more than he could ever put into words.

"I'll be sitting pretty for a while up high, but I don't imagine it'll be too long before reinforcements reach us and I'll come down and get you, then you'll be out of here in no time. Might even get back to base in time for chow – I'm sure that'll work as an incentive if nothing else will," he laughed.

"Thanks," Sam whispered, as he battled the encroaching darkness.

"For what?" Mick wondered.

"For coming, for carrying me, for taking a _bullet_ for me…" Sam listed. "We're going to have words about that last one, though," he promised.

"I'm sure we will," Mick laughed. "But for now…" he gestured towards to opening with his rifle, his intent clear. "When your leg is better, _then_ you can try and kick my arse."

" _Will_ kick your ass," Sam promised with a mumble.

"In Kali, no doubt," Mick agreed. "Surprisingly enough, some obscure Filipino martial art is not exactly ranked very highly on the British Army's training regime. But, I daresay for the rest of it…"

"Yeah, yeah, soldier boy – we'll see," Sam laughed gently. "But seriously," Sam struggled to remain upright as his exhaustion once more took a hold. "Thank you, for everything."

"Any time, Coop," Mick promised, all trace of amusement gone as he contemplated just how much he was willing to lay his life on the line for his friend. He knew a lot of people and was on friendly terms with many of them, but in reality he only called a few of them _'friend'_. Coop had long since earned that title and there wasn't much he wouldn't do for a friend. "Any time."

* * *

"Hey, Mick?" Digger asked cautiously, keeping his tone low and trying to avoid anyone overhearing him. They had long been friends, having worked together during their time with the Paras. "You may want to head over to C Barracks – your friend, Cooper, was getting into it with Major Hardy. I think the sandstorm is the only thing keeping the rest of camp watching this little sideshow they seem to have going on. Whatever it is, it's not looking good."

"Thanks, mate," Mick said quietly, quickly making his excuses to the rest of the men and taking his half-eaten dinner to the other end of the mess tent before rushing off towards C Barracks wondering what he would find when he got there.

Major Hardy was as slavish to the regulations as you could get – for the Recon Marine there was nothing that his Officer's Handbook couldn't solve and if the problem couldn't be found in those pages then it clearly wasn't a real problem. He'd made his name largely off the skill of the men serving under him and he'd unfairly borne most of the credit. Sam had often worked alongside the man and clearly thought little of him, but Mick couldn't recall there being any real contention between the two.

Sam had been embedded with the Recon Marines for as long as Mick had known him, but his expertise in interrogation and profiling had seen him move between all three branches of the military and beyond the limits of the US Forces. The Joint Special Operations Taskforce had often asked for Cooper, his proficiency as well as his discretion was well known to the Allied Forces in both the Iraqi deserts and the Afghani mountains.

Mick knew that the job had been slowly eating away at the man, that countless interrogations, some of them conducted in a more than questionable manner, were beginning to cause Sam to doubt not just his role in the military but his very humanity.

The former profiler's introverted thinking frequently led to some incredibly interesting philosophical debates, but more often than not Cooper's rationale seemingly allowed himself to believe that he was a fundamentally flawed individual with little to no chance of redemption, and the difficulties he faced in his latest job did little to improve his self-image.

Mick sped through the blustery night, sand pelting his face in the high winds and reducing visibility as he tried to keep his eyes down and somewhat protected. He was literally tripping up over the guy lines supporting the large tent that made up C Barracks before he caught sight of his friend and heard Hardy shout, _'you'd better hope God is listening to your prayers, Cooper, because the Marine Corps sure as shit isn't going to!'_ before storming off. Sam glared after Major Hardy but otherwise made no effort to move and take himself out of the harsh conditions.

"What's wrong? Has something happened?" Mick asked frantically having caught the end of the confrontation and seen the anger that was coursing through Sam's body, pulsating in its intensity.

"You could say that," Sam replied bitterly, his attention still focused on the retreating Major, his silhouette disappearing into the sandstorm. He spared a quick glance at his friend before tersely explaining: "I punched Walker."

" _Walker_? You punched a _General_? Are you out of your fucking mind?" Mick demanded incredulously. He'd always known Sam to be relatively calm and easy-going, with a slow-burning fuse and a desire to find more peaceful ways of settling any differences.

"I know," Sam sighed heavily, releasing a deep breath as his actions finally caught up with him. He started walking, Mick hot on his heels – there was a supply tent nearby that rarely saw anyone venture inside on an evening; he wanted to get out of the storm and more than that, he didn't feel like making _another_ public spectacle of himself.

"You _know_?" Mick was furious that his friend seemed relatively indifferent to his possible fate. "You punched a two-star _General_ , Coop. You're not a soldier but you’re sure as shit not a civilian out here either! You're in the goddamn military and there are real and severe consequences for these kind of actions!"

"I know!" Sam shouted back, his tenuous grip on his temper having once again fallen by the wayside.

"Then _why_? What the hell were you thinking?" Mick demanded, quieter but no less intense.

"I don't know," Sam shook his head.

"Don't give me that bullshit, Coop. Why the fuck did you hit him?"

"Because _he's_ the son of a bitch who…" Sam trailed off, unready to confess the truth to his friend, unwilling to risk seeing the condemnation in his eyes.

"Who what?" Mick probed, anger and frustration giving way to concern.

"He's the one who green-lighted my interrogation on Armir," the older man finally confessed. " _He's_ the one who ordered the use of enhanced interrogation techniques and didn't even have the _balls_ to oversee the whole thing."

"Look, Walker's an arsehole, no doubt," Mick said plainly, "but even Generals have their orders, Coop – truthfully, the man who green-lighted your interrogation is probably sitting pretty back in DC, and I doubt if he'll ever even _hear_ about this little incident. Christ, I doubt if he'll lose one minute of sleep over it all.

" _You_ were the one who tried to give me a lecture about orders all that time ago, about how it's a soldier's duty to _follow_ those orders – well, like it or not, you're in the military, too, Coop. You left the FBI and you signed up to the military – being embedded with the Marines in the Intel. Corps doesn't give you the right to ignore the same rules that the rest of us have to worry about. Now you may not be a fully-fledged soldier, granted, but you still have your orders and you still have to follow them, and if you _can't_ then you should think about leaving the military, but sure as shit not by getting yourself _court-martialled_!"

"I haven't felt so out of control since…since I don't even _know_ how long," Sam confessed, shaking his head in dismay. "I was just _so_ angry. I've done things in this war that I never thought I'd be capable of doing – that I've done it with the full backing of my government is _not_ much of a consolation. _'Enhanced interrogation'_?" he scoffed. "The military sure as hell like dressing it up, don't they?" Sam was almost incredulous in his disbelief.

"You mean the modern-day versions of _'resettlement_ and _'special installations'_ don't do it for you?" Mick asked sarcastically, referring to the Nazi Party euphemisms from the Second World War that hid the dark truths of concentration camps and gas chambers. He was depressed at seeing the truth of his friend's words – _'enhanced interrogation'_ was just another term for torture...torture sanctioned by the government, maybe, but torture nonetheless.

"Look, you need to find Walker and you need to apologise…" Mick started before Cooper cut across him.

"I will _not_ grovel before that son of a bitch and apologise to him!" Sam stated angrily. "Even if that asshole _isn't_ the one who decided that water-boarding a suspect is ok because we're not on US soil and Armir isn't a US citizen, he's still the same son of a bitch who passed that order along.

"Don't pretend _you've_ always passed orders down the line, Mick," Sam whispered knowingly, furiously, his tone dark and unforgiving, his anger fuelling him on. "I'm not a fully-fledged soldier, you're right about that, but I've been out here for _years_ now and I know how things work. I've heard the RoE's being reduced down to _everyone_ being declared hostile and I've heard CO's refuse to pass that order down the ranks because they thought it was bullshit, because _they_ knew what the consequences could be!

"Well, Walker's a two-star General and he, of all people, should understand consequences, and if he didn't before, well, then his broken nose is sure as hell going to remind him of it now!" Sam finished furiously.

Mick just closed his eyes in despair as he finally knew Sam's actions. He didn't know whether or not Sam understood the full ramifications of his behaviour, or if he simply didn't care while his blood was up, but Mick knew that once things settled down the older man would be furious with himself, for losing control in such an explosive manner if nothing else.

Sam sighed heavily and flopped down on a box of MRE's. "I can't…I can't keep ignoring my conscience and follow these orders, Mick," Sam stated almost brokenly, the strong emotion clear in the tremble of his voice. "I've never thought of myself as a naïve man but I swear to God that I never expected to be involved with the type of shit they have me doing over here."

Mick didn't know what to say to that – it _had_ been naïve of the otherwise intelligent man to think that he wouldn't be asked to cross any lines in his job. Counter-interrogation was not exactly a career-path that invited the soft and the cuddly – it was the legal version of an enforcer for the criminal underground and most involved in the actual questioning did not hold onto their innocence for long.

Sam's skills as a profiler meant that he had rarely needed to resort to the more creative techniques that many others relied upon, but all too often the men in charge simply didn't have the patience for the long play – the intelligence held by the men they captured usually only allowed for a small window of opportunity, which made getting that information as quickly as possible the main aim. Mick didn't like it and he didn't condone it but he also couldn't deny that some of the intelligence gathered from the use of _'enhanced interrogation techniques'_ had saved his life, the lives of his friends and the lives of countless civilians.

"It's a shitty situation, Coop, no doubt, but there are better ways of going about it. Walker's a glory-seeking arsehole who’s more concerned with what’s going in in DC than here, but he's not unreasonable – you need to _talk_ to him, Coop," Mick asked, a pleading note to his voice. "There is no way this is going to go unanswered, especially not with that prick, Hardy, involved. But you can at least steer this away from fully-fledged career suicide.

"I've been at this a while, Coop, and I've known one or two men who ended up with a dishonourable discharge, and they find it next to impossible to do anything with that staining their jacket. If you ever want to go back to the FBI…" Mick shook his head, trailing off, the words unnecessary – a DD had never helped anyone in the job market, especially anyone looking to work in law enforcement.

"What makes you think I want to go back to the FBI?" Sam asked curiously.

"You reek of unfinished business, mate," the sniper laughed mirthlessly. "Look, this is clearly not what you want to be doing, and you're a smart guy with a hell of a résumé, even if most of it has to be redacted now, but you have options, Coop. There are a whole hell of a lot of things you could do after the Military, but _not_ with a DD on your record."

"So you want me to apologise to that asshole?" Sam asked the incredulity finally ebbing away as his adrenaline started to die down and reality set in.

"I think you have to swallow your pride long enough and do what you have to do – it's not going to be easy and it's not going to be something you're ever going to want to think about again, but Walker will likely let it slide – _only_ if you talk to him, though, if you explain and if you apologise. You’ve got sway out here – use it!"

"I'm not sure I can do that," Sam shook his head sadly.

"Well, Coop," Mick started quietly but firmly. "Then it sounds to me like you've had enough…that you've had _more_ than enough. If that's the case, then you need to get out. You're not under the same kind of contract the rest of Recon are under, you have no obligations here. Leave now while there is still enough of you left to recognise."

"You think I'm _that_ far off the rails already?" Sam asked, half amused, half confused and entirely convinced that he wasn't really ready to hear the answer.

"You're not off the rails, mate," Mick shook his head sadly. "And I'm not talking about how _others_ view you – I'm talking about _you_! You can't let this job destroy you, but it is, isn't it? You've been getting more and more withdrawn these past few years, angry and bitter at the whole situation. Military life is hard on everyone, over here _and_ back at home, and the demands of the job can sometimes be beyond the unimaginable, yours more so than most, and the cost is too much for some people.

"But there is a life outside the military and if you're at the stage where you either don't believe it, or _can't_ believe it, then you need to leave, you need to find some way to remember how to live again. Go out to the pub, play a sport, buy a dog, hell…take up painting, just do something because you _want_ to, because you like it, because it makes you _happy_.

"This job, it's not making you happy, in fact, right now you are perhaps the most miserable son of a bitch I know. Whatever it is that makes you think you have something to atone for, being here is just making that worse, and while I like working with you, as a friend I've got to tell you that you need to get the hell out of here and find something else to do, something that _isn't_ going to eat away at you like this job is doing.

"You're a smart guy, Coop and you have options. You did a lot with the FBI, and you did most of it without a gun, without military-style enhanced interrogation techniques and without a uniform – that's a pretty unique skill set. You want to do something good, then go back to that.

"Bollocks," Mick muttered, shaking his head fiercely as he drew in a deep breath. "Look, I don't really know if all that rambling crap made any kind of sense, but all I'm really trying to say is that you don't need to be over _here_ to make a difference, ok?"

"Thanks," Sam laughed a little at his friend's unease. Mick might be a natural at reading people and their intentions, but talking about it all was a very different matter. Ask him just about anything and he can give clear and cohesive statements, unless it ventured into the personal, then he'd react in one of several ways: sometimes he'd stutter and start, clearly uncomfortable with the attention, and other times he'd look at you with a mix of horror and accusation, as though you'd just asked him to castrate himself for fun. Occasionally he'd glare at you and promise violence but usually he'd deflect it with humour and sarcasm or some ribald comment that was clearly meant to deflect from the original question.

When it came to Sam, Mick seemed to have a way of cutting through the bullshit and getting right to the point, and no matter how hard Sam tried he could rarely hide anything from the younger man.

"Well, I guess I have a General to suck up to," Sam said with a heavy sigh. "God, I hate it when you're right."

"Guess you really _should_ leave then," Mick said cheekily, giving an easy grin once the anxiety about his friend's situation had somewhat abated. "Because I'm _always_ right."

"Sure you are," Sam said, shaking his head, his eyes lit up with mirth. "Maybe I really _should_ get out, apparently long-time service leads to a rather delusional state of mind."

"Well, I can't deny that," Mick agreed. "I'm friends with _you_ , after all."

"You know even if I _do_ leave, I'm not going to leave you alone, right?" Sam asked earnestly.

"I know," Mick confirmed, and he _did_ , but it was still nice to hear the words. "Couldn't get rid of you if I tried."

"Nope," Sam laughed. "Not even then."

* * *

** The Taliban ** **_– an Islamic fundamentalist group that started in Afghanistan, (although there are now factions throughout the Middle-East) they follow a strict and highly controversial interpretation of Sharia Law._ **

** MRE ** **_–_ ** ** Meal, Ready to Eat ** **_– military ration packs that contain a whole meal. Usually taste like crap!_ **

** Spec. Ops. ** **_–_ ** ** Special Operations ** **_– often covert missions performed by Special Forces._ **

** Black Watch ** **_– an infantry battalion of the Royal Regiment of Scotland that is highly regarded. It was fused with other groups during 2006, but due to their impressive reputation, retained the name_ ** **Black Watch _._**

** Comms ** **_. –_ ** ** Communications ** **_._ **

** Enhanced Interrogation Techniques ** **_– includes waterboarding, food/water/sleep deprivation, beatings, prolonged stress positions and many more – basically, military language for government-backed torture._ **


	14. Chapter 14

"Heya, mate," Mick said as he sat down in the booth. The bar was busy – there was an American Football match up on the big screen and the local crowd, all Redskins fans judging by the jerseys, were shouting abuse at the referee.

Mick was in the US for a few weeks – as part of the SAS, he was often required to take part in joint training ventures with other Tier One groups throughout the world and especially in the USA, given that they often worked together when out in the same AO.

Fort Bragg in North Carolina, a military base to several different Special Forces groups, had been his home for a little over three weeks so far. Mick still had at least another week to go before being shipped back out to Afghanistan for a Special Op., but he had been granted weekend furlough and so took the time to travel up to DC.

He had last seen Sam Cooper shortly before the older man's official discharge from military service. The profiler had made no plans as to his future after the military but it seemed as though his old friend, Jack Fickler, newly appointed Director of the FBI, was not willing to let Sam's talents go to waste.

Mick knew the Director had been trying to lure Sam back to the Bureau for some time, even _before_ he had left the military, and so now Mick was travelling up to DC because Coop had finally acquiesced and agreed to listen to Fickler's offer.

"Mick," Sam nodded his greeting and filled a healthy glass of beer from the cold pitcher in the centre of the table. His friend looked tired, slouched in his booth as if the mere effort of sitting upright was too much to bear. "You ok?"

"Knackered, mate – training's been pretty brutal," Mick yawned as he cradled his beer and reached for a handful of nachos. He was very tired and the journey had been a tedious one. He was aware that he'd probably return to training more exhausted than when he'd left earlier in the day, but he didn't have many opportunities to catch up with his old friend.

"Yeah?"

"Pretty sure the US Special Forces are gearing up towards something big. You heard anything in the scuttlebutt about Bin Laden lately?" he asked, all too aware that was _the_ op. every member of US Special Forces wanted to be in on.

"Wouldn't you know more about that than me?" Sam asked with a small laugh. "I'm not with Military Intelligence anymore, remember – back to the simplicities of civilian life for me."

"Yeah," Mick snorted. "Because your life is the very definition of _'simple',_ Mr. BAU. Anyhow, I don't think, when the time _does_ come, that going after Bin Laden will be a joint operation – I'm pretty sure the Americans want this one all to themselves."

"Do you blame us?" Sam shrugged. "9/11 is still very much at the forefront of the public consciousness in America and nearly ten years later, we've _still_ not got the guy who orchestrated the whole thing."

"No, I don't blame you – just wish _I_ wasn't being forced into extra training for an op. I'm going to have nothing to do with," Mick laughed mirthlessly. In truth, he really _was_ quite happy for the US troops to go hunting for Bin Laden – the potential fallout with those that would seek to avenge his capture, or more likely, his death, would be more than the underfunded MOD could handle anyway.

The recession had cut serious holes into funding for the Ministry of Defence and both MI5 and MI6, and with the War on Terror being brought increasingly nearer the doorstep, the truth that the country was incapable of adequately defending itself from threats foreign and domestic was made more and more clear.

"So, you're tired of training and wanting to go home?" Sam summarised.

"Not sure I'm too keen on that idea right now, either," Mick shook his head, his countenance altogether much graver.

"How come?" Sam wondered quietly, concern leaking through as he took in the changes of his friend's demeanour.

"You'll notice how Danny isn't here?" Mick said, gesturing towards the empty space beside him.

Sam nodded – Mick and Danny were as close as any brothers he knew and having worked alongside each other for so long in the military, it was rare to see one without the other. They had gone through basic together, joined the Paras together, gone through hell together, gone through Selection and joined the SAS together, Danny was even dating Mick's younger sister, Jenna.

"You remember Danny's brother? Simon?" Mick asked, and after receiving an almost hesitant nod from Sam as the older man could see the direction the conversation was heading, he reluctantly continued. "He died."

"How? Where?" Sam urged for more details.

"You know I can't answer that, Coop," Mick shook his head sadly.

Sam nodded – probably not Afghanistan or Iraq then, as Mick could have said either one of those current war zones without revealing much of anything. So, a covert operation that ended badly – which could be anywhere in the world, given the state of things!

"Danny was granted compassionate leave, so he's at home, trying to organise everything. We're holding a Dead Man's Auction as soon as we get back to Credenhill, right before we ship out to Afghanistan."

"Dead Man's Auction?" Sam wondered out loud, eyebrow raised rather sceptically at the connotations brought up by the term.

"It's not as macabre as it sounds," Mick chuckled mirthlessly. "Basically, when someone in the Regiment dies in the field, anything in their billet that their family either don't want or can't claim, is put up for sale amongst the rest of the lads – anything from equipment to some tacky souvenir from some place half way around the world."

"And you don't think that's rather…morbid?" Sam asked delicately.

"No," Mick shook his head. "At the most practical level, they're not going to need their gear once they're dead, so why not sell it on to another member in the Regiment who can actually use it? More importantly, while everyone's obviously upset, it gives them the chance to take away a memento and help out the family – all the money raised either goes to loved ones or it gets added into Regimental funds, to pay for funerals and the like."

"And Simon's?" Sam inquired of Danny's brother.

"Idiot had a girl," Mick frowned.

"And that's a bad thing?" Sam asked incredulously, thinking of his friend's rather liberal approach to the dating scene.

"It is when he was with her for almost five years, but never married her, never made it official in any way shape or form, so because she's not down on the paperwork anywhere it means that she's not eligible for his army pension. Lucy gets nothing."

"I see," Sam said slowly. He got the _'idiot'_ remark now – being in the military without any kind of will was more common than people might think. Sam knew those who were overly prepared to the point of morbidity in the event of their death, but he also knew many who refused to even contemplate such an outcome, thinking it bad juju. "They have any children?"

"No, it's a small mercy, but one all the same," Mick said, all too aware how hard it was to grow up with that kind of loss hanging over you from such a young age.

"So any money raised is going to Lucy?" Sam queried.

"That's the idea. Danny got into a huge fight with his mum because as soon as she heard about the auction she thought the money should be hers, only everyone in the Regiment has already agreed it should go to Lucy – I'm not entirely sure I trust that bitch to leave well enough alone, though."

Sam raised a brow at the vicious tone but remained silent – he knew there was no love lost between Mick and Danny's mother. Sam could not entirely disagree with the Welshman's attitude either, having seen just how little regard the woman seemed to have for her own son – Mick and Simon had more or less been solely responsible for putting the young spotter back together after his capture in Iraq, while Danny's mother had been quite happy to remain in a near-permanent drunken state with her latest boyfriend.

"How's Danny doing?" Sam inquired.

"Soldiering on, as always," Mick said, almost flippantly. He'd tried calling his friend, but so far, Danny seemed to be ignoring everyone. Mick had gone so far as to ask Jenna to go to London and keep an eye on the man, and given the way things had ended between them only days ago he'd felt like shit for even _thinking_ of asking it of her.

"Mick?" Sam asked, eyebrows raised and his head tilted in such a fashion that demanded further elucidation.

"He's a mess, Coop," Mick sighed. "What do you expect? There was more than a ten-year age gap between Danny and Si, but with their father pissing off when Danny was still a toddler and a mother who would have sold them both for a bottle of gin at her local offy given half a chance, Si was pretty much big brother _and_ parent for a long time.

"Si was the reason Danny went and signed up for the military in the first place. He loved his big brother, admired him…wanted to _be_ him! Everything Danny's worked for in his life, everything he's aimed towards is because he wanted to make his big brother proud, wanted to prove to Simon that everything he'd sacrificed for his little brother was worth it, that _Danny_ was worth it."

"I can't imagine Simon ever felt anything less than proud of his brother," Sam said earnestly.

"You know that and I know that and _Si_ sure as hell knew that, but Danny…he's a little slow on uptake about these things. That fucked up mother of his has him convinced he's not worth much of anything," Mick spat with disgust.

Sam nodded, thinking it ironic that Mick could see such a trait in his best friend and be so wholly blinded to his own self-worth issues. He wondered if Mick had ever had a Simon Wallcroft of his own somewhere in his past who had done their level best to convince the young Welshman that someone, somewhere cared. He hoped so, even if he doubted it.

"He still has you," Sam pointed out. The continued presence of the sniper in Danny's life would in no way make up for the loss of his brother, but it would surely help. "He has you and he has Jenna."

Mick winced at that. "I'm not sure I'm much of a consolation prize and as for Jenna…"

"What?"

"He broke up with her about five hours after he got the news, over the phone no less," Mick sighed. "If I didn't understand _why_ he was doing it and how much he hated himself for it, I'd have hunted him down and kicked his arse six ways from Sunday for hurting her like that, Fort Bragg or no Fort Bragg."

"You understand?" Sam asked inquisitively.

"Of course," Mick nodded. "Been there myself once or twice."

"Really?" Sam leant forward, his curiosity further peaked.

"When something happens that reminds you just how potentially fleeting your mortality is in the military, you react, and it's not usually in a rational fashion – in fact it tends to be pretty damn stupid and involves a lot of alcohol. Danny cares about Jenna, and he doesn't want her to go through the same thing Lucy did – some stranger in a uniform knocking at the door, telling her nothing more than the fact he's dead. Most of the time, the _'how'_ , _'when'_ and especially the _'where'_ we die is classified, sometimes even from next of kin. That's not an easy thing to deal with on _either_ end of the spectrum.

"He's an idiot and if he continues to be an idiot I'm going to have to beat some sense into him when I get back to the UK, but right now he's reacting to losing Si, so he's allowed a little leeway…for now," Mick promised.

"' _For now'_? So, you're expecting wedding bells in the future, then?" Sam teased his friend good naturedly.

"When they can stay together without breaking up every four months, _then_ I'll start to consider it a possibility, although I don't reckon there'll be much more to fight about in the future," Mick shrugged.

"What do you mean?" Sam asked, not entirely sure what his friend was talking about.

"Most of their big arguments have centred around one thing – the Army."

"She wants him to leave?" Sam guessed.

"Technically, she wants us _both_ to leave," Mick pointed out with a nonchalant shrug.

"But you think Danny will listen to her?"

"I think that what Danny wants more than anything is a family. He's built for that nine-to-five life complete with a semi-detached house in the suburbs, two kids and a Golden Labrador – all that stuff he never had growing up."

"Seems pretty well suited to army life, if you ask me," Sam noted.

"It _does_ suit him and he’s a bloody good soldier, but ultimately, it's not what he _wants_. He didn't join the Army because it was _his_ dream, he joined because it was _Si's_. After Simon left home, Danny was pretty much by himself and he hated it, felt like he'd lost his only real family – following in his brother's footsteps seemed the natural thing to do," Mick shrugged. There were other reasons why Danny had enlisted, but he didn't feel it was his right to go into those more personal details.

"And now you think he'll leave."

"He's not said anything to me, but I know he's been thinking about it for a while now," Mick confessed. "I'm sometimes wonder if he's stayed in as long as he has because of me…I _hope_ not. But after this…after Si…I think he's revaluating everything in his life."

"So why break up with Jenna if he's thinking about a life on Civvy Street?" Sam wondered.

"Maybe because nothing is final yet, or because he's not thinking straight, or maybe because I'm way off base and jumping to all the wrong conclusions," the sniper shrugged.

"I've already told you, you're a natural born profiler," Sam shook his head in disagreement at Mick's last statement. "I'd trust your instincts on this. Does this mean Jenna will go back to pestering _you_ , now?"

"I'm not sure how effective that would be," Mick laughed out loud. "She's already found out the puppy-dog eyes don't work on me and she can hardly use the same encouragement she uses on Danny."

"What do you mean?" Cooper asked curiously.

"Well, let's just say that there are certain… _things_ in her arsenal that she can use against Danny that she can't use against me – we Rawsons have a lot of issues but incest has never been one of them."

"She's using _sex_ as a bargaining tool?" Sam asked incredulously, more so at Mick's complacency with that fact than anything else.

"When it first came up, Danny was as shocked as you and he spoke without thinking it through," Mick laughed. "You should have seen the look on his face when he realised what he’d said and the fact that I was standing right there in front of him!"

"I can imagine," Sam laughed along with his friend.

"I love my sister and I'm glad there are still similarities between us after all these years growing up apart, but god, there are some traits I could have done without her sharing," Mick shook his head with feigned exasperation. "I swear, she says stuff I _really_ don't need to know just to get a rise out of me."

"That _does_ sound familiar," Sam smirked.

"Yeah," Mick agreed somewhat sheepishly. "Anyway, anything Danny had to say on the matter was going to be tame in comparison."

"And you let him know that, of course?" Sam asked, despite already knowing the answer.

"Hell no!" Mick exclaimed. "I need to keep him on his toes!"

"Older siblings," Sam clucked, shaking his head as he laughed knowingly.

"You were the oldest in your house, too, mate – you may not want to go around saying anything _too_ disparaging," Mick said with a knowing look.

"I had several younger siblings," Sam conceded. "But they, like me, were foster children."

"As if you, with all your mother hen tendencies, would have let that stand for anything," Mick pointed out with not a moment's hesitation.

Sam rolled his eyes – he _had_ taken on the mantle of _'big brother'_ , and he had done so with a degree of sincerity and devotion that had belied his age at the time. However, while he was eventually adopted by his foster parents, the other children were not, which meant that there had been a constant stream of young children passing through the house at various times and few were there long enough to form any deep and meaningful bonds.

"So, come on, spill," Mick demanded as he took a healthy glug of beer.

"' _Spill'_?" Sam asked. "Spill what?"

"The Director of the FBI has been dogging your every step, even when you were still embedded with the Marines," Mick stated. "Now you're up in DC and visiting Quantico – I'm pretty sure there's a reason behind it all."

"Ah, _that_ ," Sam laughed – Mick really did like to get straight to the heart of the matter.

"Yes, that," Mick agreed.

"He's offered me my own team," Sam confessed. "A Red Cell."

Mick whistled. Red Cell teams were originally designed to test the readiness and effectiveness of American personnel in combat-ready teams and were usually composed of US Navy SEALs, Recon Marines and other Special Forces Groups. After 9/11, they became something more than a military response team and branched out into various federal agencies, too, readying themselves for rapid response to any number of crises.

"Yeah," Sam agreed. It did sound an impressive invitation, even more so given Fickler's other offer. "He's also letting me _choose_ my own team."

"You have full control of hiring?" Mick wondered.

"Apparently so," Sam said, still surprised himself by the level of trust his old friend had placed in him with that offer. Sam had thought that given the way he had left the BAU and the FBI all those years ago, it would take a lot more than one man's word, even the Director's, to ease the concerns others might have about his reappearance.

"I wish I had that," Mick laughed, thinking about someone in his Squadron he'd sooner be without. "So, when do you start?"

"What makes you think I'm agreeing to this?" Sam asked curiously.

"Come on, mate," Mick said, exasperation leaking into his tone and a look that said _'how stupid do you think I am?'_ with one brow. "You've been destined to return to the FBI _long_ before you left the Marines."

"Yes, so you've said on a number of occasions," Sam chuckled.

"Am I wrong?" Mick questioned the evasive man.

"No, you're not wrong," Sam confirmed. "I've been given some time to think about it, think about getting a preliminary team together and get it past the Director, but I've not given him an answer yet."

"A Red Cell," Mick stated. "That's good, isn’t it? It will mean you don't need to wait for a phone call anymore, right?" he said, knowing that the loss of life between the initial murders and the official invite had been particularly soul-destroying for the older man.

"Theoretically, yes. We'll be responding to amber alerts, bomb threats, possible terrorist activity, and we won't need to wait for an invitation due to the federal jurisdiction of such crimes, but there will be other cases where I imagine we will _still_ need to wait for an invite. Hopefully once the team is up and running and people learn about our existence and what we do, they won't wait as long to pick up the phone, but I know from my last time at the BAU that it is _never_ that simple."

"So, who are you hoping to steal?" Mick asked, curiously. He wondered if Coop would try to recruit Hassan Saifa, his old partner from his time of being embedded with the Marines.

Sam laughed – if only Mick knew who was right at the top of his list! But he didn't think now, with Simon's death and Danny's loss, was the right time to ask.

"It's not a very long list, but it is an unconventional one and I'm not entirely sure just how much pull I have to manage this," Sam confessed.

"Ooh, intrigue," Mick joked. "Tell me more."

"Well, I suppose the one who will be hardest to obtain is a man named Jonathan Simms," Sam stated.

"Why? What's the problem there?" Mick asked.

"Well, I suppose the biggest problem right now is that he's in San Quentin," Cooper conceded.

"San Quentin? Isn't that a prison?"

"Yes," Sam confirmed. "He killed a child molester."

"Ok," Mick said at a loss for what to say. "Well, I can't say his choice of victim bothers me, but can you even hire someone with a criminal record, let alone a murder charge?"

"I guess we'll find out," Sam laughed mirthlessly. "He was a newly minted detective in Philadelphia the first time I met him. He called in the BAU and we worked a case together – he was smart, observant and very passionate."

"Evidently," Mick quipped, thinking about where the _'passionate'_ man had ended up.

"He'd transferred to San Francisco, followed a girlfriend out there, I think. But a couple of weeks later there was a pretty brutal case involving a paedophile ring, and Simms was one of the detectives in charge of the investigation. He worked up his own profile and found the guy, but the UnSub resisted arrest and died – a hearing later deemed that excessive force was the reason.

"There had been recent reports in the media about police brutality and so the Brass wanted to make an example – they charged Simms with Voluntary Manslaughter and sentenced him to nine years in prison. He's already served over six, and now he's eligible for parole – with his previous record, his scores at the Police Academy, the mitigating circumstances of his case, I'm sure pretty sure I can push for an early release but I want to get him a full pardon."

"And the Director is ok with this?" Mick asked sceptically. He'd known several different people in high-ranking positions throughout his time in the Army, and while some of them were good and concerned with doing their job and doing it well, there were others who were more concerned with making sure their own arses were covered before anything and everything else. Letting a convicted killer out of prison and handing him a gun and a badge to back it up…he wasn't sure if anyone would go for that kind of a deal.

"Well, I haven't exactly told him yet," Sam conceded. "He gave me this offer two days ago and I've been going through my options, but I remembered Simms from way back and I want him. He's a good man who was handed a shitty case and got pulled into PD politics that were beyond his control. He wasn't the only officer involved in arresting the UnSub, but because he was the lead investigator, he was the one the Brass decided to use as their whipping boy.

"I've read the case file, Mick. The UnSub died of a subdural haematoma which he got when he tried to escape – Simms and three other officers chased him until Simms caught up to him, the UnSub struggled and they _both_ fell down the steps. The UnSub hit his head pretty hard but was up and cursing at them within seconds, while Simms ended up with just a few bruises and one hell of a headache, but then the UnSub died while being transported and the whole affair was shoved under a microscope.

"It had been a high-profile case from the get-go, and the public wanted to see the perpetrator face a trial and a damn long prison sentence, and when he died they were denied that, so the media stirred the waters and the usual _'police brutality'_ stories cropped up. The Brass wanted to stop any stories about police-bias and so they went after Simms with everything they had to show that they didn't tolerate that sort of behaviour in their Department.

"He was handed a raw deal and he lost everything because of it – his girlfriend, his job, his reputation _and_ his freedom. It would be criminal to let all that talent go to waste and it would be criminal to let Jonathan Simms spend one night more in prison – an ex-cop in San Quentin? You think he's had an easy time of things?"

Mick shook his head, words unnecessary. It was good to see Coop so passionate about something, his last few years in the military having all but distinguished the spark he had seen in the man the first time they had met. It _did_ sound like Simms had caught a raw deal, and if it was true then he hoped Coop could get the man out – more than anything, he hoped this Simms was worth the trouble, worthy of Cooper's seemingly absolute faith in the man's virtues.

"So, a disgraced former cop who was screwed over by some right wankers in charge, check. Who's next?"

"Well, there's an agent I think would be well suited to the BAU but she's got another assignment at the moment," Sam shrugged.

"You don't think you could get her reassigned?" Mick asked. The man was hoping to get a convicted killer out of San Quentin but he thought a reassignment was beyond him?

"I don't think I'll have long to wait," Sam smiled. "She's not exactly great at making friends and seemingly even worse at keeping them. She doesn't tend to spend too long in any one department so I doubt I'll have long to wait before I can offer her a place and not piss anyone off because I'm stealing their agent."

"Sounds like a peach," Mick grinned. "I can see why you'd want her – you just don't want to be stuck being the unsociable one, huh?"

"Something like that," Sam grinned back. "Beth Griffith has had many complaints added to her files, all from her superiors, but it seems like they usually come about because they don't like to be proven wrong, which she has done on numerous occasions, but the complaints are also there because she lacks tact and lets them know when they’re wrong."

"What do you mean?" Mick asked as he waved over a nearby waitress and asked for something more to eat.

"She's good at her job, but not everyone agrees and she quite vociferously takes offence at that," Sam said simply. "She's never worked in the BAU but she's taken a few of the courses they offer and done a fair bit of psychological profiling before – she's done some work on domestic terrorism and threat assessment that is particularly compelling, especially on personal cause bombers."

"Sounds like she'd be a blast at parties," Mick laughed with an impish grin. "You're looking to put one hell of a team together, Coop."

"I'm not done yet," Sam pointed out. "There's a rookie, she's still going through training at the moment, but she shows a lot of promise."

"If she's going through training, how do you know about her?" Mick asked curiously.

"I know her father, have done for years," Sam offered with a shrug. "He's Army, high-ranking – a good man and one hell of a soldier, but I'm not sure how well he scores as a father. He's a pretty demanding man, which is all well and good in the military, not so much at home. Both daughters were pushed to the extremes to _'make'_ something of themselves.

"Gina was always an overachiever at school, but she resented being compared to her sister and the constant one-upmanship that her father tried to instigate between the two girls. In an effort to appease her father, she applied and was accepted at West Point, and I'm sure I don't need to tell you what an achievement _that_ is, but she was unsatisfied with it, with the potential pathways it opened up to her and with what it would mean for her future.

"So, she risked her father's wrath and left West Point, and joined the FBI instead. I sometimes think I might have had something of an influence on that particular decision, but honestly, I wouldn't regret it if that _were_ the case. She's tough enough to stick it out with the military, but with her compassion and level of perception, I think she'd be wasted there."

Mick didn't have anything to say to that – over the years, Coop had tried to convince him that _he_ could do more in life than soldiering, and Mick had always found himself getting more than slightly irritated at the man's casually dismissive manner in regards to his military career.

He knew and understood that Cooper's experience with the military had not been an overwhelmingly positive one – working in interrogation and intelligence, how could it have been any different? But Mick had started from the ground up – he'd entered as basic infantry before passing out and joining the Paras 1st Battalion, but he had not been a man of rank. He had worked his way up to his current station and had earned it through blood, sweat and tears in the most literal sense of the phrase.

Mick had mixed views about the military himself – having lost his innocence and naiveté long before he enlisted he hadn't entered with his ideals intact, but overall, he _liked_ being a part of something more. He had made a couple of very close friends, had friendships that spanned the globe, travelled through all seven continents (although honestly, he could have survived without Antarctica), learned several new languages and too many skills to count.

The British Army had given him a roof over his head, food in his stomach and clothes on his back, and there had been a time in his life when those things had certainly _not_ been guaranteed. The friendship, camaraderie and, dare he say it, the sense of _family_ had been unexpected but much appreciated benefits.

Out in Afghanistan and Iraq and all those other areas of conflict he had been to over the years, Mick had helped set up refugee camps, distribute aid, dig people out of avalanches and mudslides and rubble alike, provide the injured with basic medical care or transport them to someone better equipped, not to mention all that he had done for his fellow soldiers. He might not have been out catching serial killers and rapists, but he certainly didn't see his military service as a waste of time.

"So are you hiring her because you know her father or…?"

"No!" Sam interrupted adamantly. "I might not have known about her had I _not_ known her father, but I want her on my team on her own merits. I'm sure she'll have doubts of her own on that score if this ever gets finalised, but I assure you, she will make a damn good agent and I want her on my team."

"Just asking," Mick said softly, putting his hands up in an effort to placate his friend. "So, that's your potential team?"

"Most of it," Sam nodded, quickly looking away from the young Welshman – he desperately wanted Mick on his team but was afraid what the younger man's answer would be.

From a strictly unbiased point of view, Mick was a highly intelligent and incredibly perceptive young man with a broad general knowledge and a skillset that consisted of long-range shooting, bomb disposal, interrogation and counter-interrogation and many more besides. He was usually pretty calm and level-headed, and at times so hard to read that the UnSub would have to do something very specific in order to get a rise out of the usually stoic Welshman.

His high-level military training would provide the team with a unique asset, and his life experiences in both foster care and on the streets, far from normal and far from easy, gave him an insight into both criminal and victim mentalities.

The man had friends and associates in many different groups and agencies – the various military outfits he had come across during his time in Special Forces, Military Intelligence from the UK, the US and many more besides, various PMCs and close allies in both Interpol and the UN Police.

From a more personal point of view, Sam just wanted his friend out of the military. He knew that asking the man to sign up to a high-risk job at the FBI wasn't exactly going to provide the Welshman with the kind of safety and security that he would want for his friend, but he also knew Mick well enough to know that anything less and the sniper would go out of his mind with boredom – he needed a challenge, physical _and_ mental, to keep him interested and a spot on the Red Cell team would provide both, with Sam there able to watch his six.

Surely the odd firefight with a deranged psychopath held better odds of survival than daily run-ins with IEDs and sniper fire.

Mick narrowed his eyes as he took in the sudden lack of eye contact and awkward silence from his friend – he could hazard a guess at what had brought on the sudden closed-jaw syndrome but he would have no idea what he would say to the man if he really _did_ ask, so he thought it best not to pursue.

"Well, good luck getting it past FBI Brass," Mick finally said, after the pause in conversation had stretched into the uncomfortable. "It sounds more than a little unconventional, but then maybe that's what the FBI needs to help get the job done."

"Hopefully," Sam agreed quietly. "I've already spoken to Hotchner – he leads his own team in the BAU and is pretty much the go-to guy in the Unit these days. He _seemed_ pretty happy with the idea of me coming back to the Bureau but to be honest, who can really tell with the man – Hotch could teach _Zeno_ a thing or two about Stoicism."

Mick nodded, smiling. He had always suspected that several people who had been with Coop from the early days of the BAU would be glad to have the man back in the fold but he knew that the older man had been less convinced – he was glad to see the confirmation and the effects of it.

He yawned, almost jaw-splittingly wide. "Sorry mate," he offered the older man.

"No apologies needed," Sam shook his head. "I knew you were exhausted – I should have sent you off to your hotel room hours ago. That or plied you with coffee instead of beer."

"Coffee always works," Mick agreed sagely. "So when are you getting yourself an apartment? It would be so much easier to pass out on your sofa than go through the hassle of signing into some hotel every time."

"As soon as things look a little more concrete," Sam conceded.

"Given the fact that this Fickler guy came after you while you were still in the military, I'm guessing that means you've got a fair bit of sway right now."

"Hopefully that's the case," Sam agreed – after all, he would need all the sway imaginable to get a rookie, a con, a problematic agent and a foreign citizen approved as agents on one of the FBI's most elite teams. He would ask Fickler about the possibility of hiring Mick before asking the Welshman himself, no point in making things awkward until absolutely necessary. "I guess we'll find out soon enough."

* * *

** Tier One ** **_– Special Mission Units – made up of Special Forces, they are given special missions, such as the capture of Saddam Hussein or the death of Osama Bin Laden._ **

** MI5/MI6 ** **_–_ ** ** Military Intelligence 5 ** **_(largely deals with domestic situations) and_ ** **Military Intelligence 6 _(largely deals with foreign situations – the UK's intelligence agencies equivalent to America's_ CIA _and_ NSA _._**

** Offy ** **_– British slang term for an_ ** ** off-licence ** **_, or what Americans call a_ ** ** liquor store ** **_._ **

** Civvy Street ** **_– slang term to describe servicemen and women leaving the armed forces and returning to life as a civilian._ **

** PMCs ** **_–_ ** ** Private Military Companies/Contractors. **

** UN Police ** **_– they act as a peacekeeping force for the UN – they monitor and report on situations, as well as advise and train the local enforcement agencies throughout the globe._ **

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_When introducing the team I have tried to keep to canon as much as possible given what little we do know from the show._ **
> 
> **_I expounded quite a lot about Simms, mainly because I wanted to explore how it was possible for the FBI to hire him and trust him despite the murder charge and the criminal record - I thought being an ex-cop who was given a full pardon was one possibility._ **
> 
> **_I also needed to explain why Beth Griffith is not in the team straight away (she was there in CM:SB episode 1, but not in the introductory crossover episode with regular CM)._ **
> 
> **_Hopefully I've more or less covered everything : )_ **


	15. Chapter 15

" _This_ is the team you want?" Director Jack Fickler of the FBI asked his friend incredulously as he flicked through the already well-read files in front of him. He was used to Sam Cooper's stoicism and had long ago picked up the ability to read most of the emotions lying beneath the purposefully blank stare, but this time? This time he wasn't sure if his friend was serious or if he was poorly executing a joke.

"This is the team I want," the profiler stated firmly.

"You're not joking?" Fickler asked, certain that they needed clarification on the point.

"I'm not joking," Sam said, a small frown appearing – he hadn't expected his choices to go over well with the Brass, but he had never even considered the possibility that it might not be taken seriously at all.

"I gave you carte blanche to create your own team, you have the pick of _everyone_ in the FBI and you want a convicted murderer, a rookie who hasn't even finished the Academy, an agent with more reprimands in her file than anything else and a soldier with no qualifications and who isn't even a US citizen.

"Sam, I know I gave you a lot of freedom to form your own team here, but did you really expect _this_ selection to be approved? I'm very well aware of the fact that I told you the Red Cell team would be non-traditional, but don't you think this is taking things a step too far?"

"You asked me who I wanted," Sam shrugged. " _This_ is who I want. I know that they're not who FBI Brass would think of first, but I've thought long and hard about how everything needs to be if this Red Cell venture is to work and one of the most vital aspects of that is the team. If I were to choose the sort of agents you want me to, then it would be just another team in the BAU.

"I know Agent Hotchner has his own team now, and I've heard nothing but good things about all of them – they are _the_ go-to team for the BAU and one that other agents should aspire to be, and if you'd asked me to form another typical team for the BAU _that_ is where I would have looked for inspiration.

"But all due respect, sir, you didn't ask me to form another typical team for the BAU – you wanted a Red Cell. As you said, it's non-traditional and so it _needs_ non-traditional components."

"Agent La Salle?" Fickler sighed resignedly – he should have known that nothing with Sam would ever be straight forward. He asked about the youngest potential member first – despite being a rookie, La Salle looked to be one of the more appealing hires on Cooper's unconventional list.

"She's young, yes," Sam agreed. "And completely untried in the field, but I've known her for a long time and she is smart and disciplined and she has great instincts for this type of work – you can see from her test scores so far at the Academy that she is more than capable.

"Given a little time and effort, she will prove to be an extremely valuable asset to this team, _and_ to the Bureau. I don't want to change who she is or what she can do, but where a more experienced agent wouldn't take advice about how to cope with this type of work, thinking they already know it all, she's young, meaning that she will be more receptive, more willing to learn about handling this kind of case-load in the long-run. In a few years, she will be one of your very best agents, trust me."

"Agent Griffith?" the Director asked, a little relieved by Cooper's explanation. This wasn't some plan to get back at the Bureau for all the ways they had failed him, it wasn't some half thought out idea or even an experimental one – Sam had clearly been thinking through what it would take to make the Red Cell a viable team for the future.

"I've read her file," Sam laughed knowingly at his old friend's rather sceptical look. "I know that she's had a lot of run-ins with her superiors, almost from the start of her time with the Bureau, but I have also read beyond that – I've read her own account of things.

"In many of her case files, she made good and accurate profiles that were either skewed to fit someone else's beliefs or not considered at all, and _that_ seems to be the basis for most of her more forceful words with her superiors _and_ the subsequent reprimands. She has a few profiling classes under her belt and the case files proves that she has the aptitude to put it to use in a real-life situation, if only someone would allow her the room and grant her the trust necessary to fulfil her potential.

"Clearly she is not afraid to speak her mind, and that is a must for this team. I will need someone with her tenacity – she will not be afraid to stand up to anyone, UnSubs, uncooperative witnesses, local LEOs, even me.

"Also, her geo-profiling is second to none," Sam ended with what he hoped was a reassuring smile. He knew that Beth's file did not present an image of an easy-going, competent agent, but he had read between the lines and seen the potential in her, seen what she could be capable of if only given the chance.

"She's currently working with an anti-terrorism taskforce, and I would be loath to remove her at this moment in the operation," Fickler stated firmly.

"I'm aware of that, and I wouldn't ask you to, just that you consider her for the Red Cell team as soon as her current assignment ends. I don't want to start this venture off with bad blood between us and another department, especially one we're likely to have to work alongside at some stage, but I don't want to let her slip through the cracks into another department that won't appreciate her, either."

"Understood, I'll keep her under consideration. Now…Simms?" Jack asked with a no-nonsense tone, getting to one of the biggest problems in Cooper's selection. "Please, Sam, tell me what the hell you're thinking there."

"I read his file, too," Sam said gravely. "I read about how both he _and_ the UnSub, the UnSub that he tracked down almost single-handedly with his own profiling abilities, I might add, fell down the stairs when he went to make the arrest – the UnSub resisted and they were _both_ injured. Simms was in an ambulance being carted off to hospital when the UnSub succumbed to his own injuries on someone else's watch.

"Do I think he was beyond angry and disgusted with the UnSub on that particular case? Of course, and frankly I'd be more disturbed if what that monster had done to those children had left Simms unmoved. Do I think he was a little gung-ho and used more force than was necessary when he went after the UnSub and tackled him? Absolutely, and I think we've all done the same when we've come across a fleeing criminal that we're adamant will not escape justice. Do I think he loses any sleep over the fact that a murderous paedophile is no longer a part of this world? Doubtful, but then I can't think of too many people who would. Do I think he intended to kill the man? No, absolutely not.

"I met the man back when he was working Vice in Philadelphia. He was a quiet and pensive detective, intelligent and he had great rapport with cops and crooks alike, and a sensitivity with witnesses and victims that is rare.

"That case went wrong at just about every turn, and apart from that fall, a fall that only occurred because the UnSub resisted arrest, none of it was down to Simms. He was dealt a bad hand from his superiors, who were so concerned with their media image that they lost sight of what was important – looking after an injured detective with a previously exemplary record. Simms paid one hell of a price for the upkeep of their public image by serving over _six_ years in San Quentin _as a cop_ – I'm sure you can imagine the kind if things he might have had to endure in there."

"It does sound like he got a raw deal, but at the end of the day, he's still in prison and he still murdered a man," the Director pointed out, all business.

"A man died as a result of injuries sustained during the arrest, but murder implies Simms killed the man without justification – it was not premeditated, it was certainly not foreseeable, and it was definitely _not_ a case of police brutality – it was accidental and it occurred when the UnSub _resisted arrest_ ," Sam reiterated the final point, seeing _that_ as the salient point of it all.

"As to his sentence, I'm working on that. He's up for parole anyway, and I'm sure a few words from the Director of the FBI would help ease things along.” He said pointedly. “I know there are issues with criminal records and employment in law enforcement, but Simms was one hell of a cop, and we worked well together – he's another one with the natural instincts for profiling and his latest experience will add a whole new level to his understanding of the criminal world which could be vital for Red Cell work.

"He is perfect for this team and for this venture and I know it is a lot to ask, I know there are many questions that will be raised as a result of hiring him and I know this could be problematic for you down the line, but I want him on my team. I want him as an agent, but I know it's not as simple as that – give him agent status if you can, make him a probationary agent if you have doubts, hell, hire him as a consultant, just please hire him!"

"You _really_ think this is something that could happen?"

"I think I'm working together with a friend who's a criminal lawyer to get Simms pardoned and the man is two steps away from having the whole mess expunged from his record. I think the man deserves another chance at doing a job he's great at, a job he was made for. I think that I want him on my team and I think that it's one of those non-negotiable terms you talked about when you first offered me the job."

Fickler shook his head and looked away, unable to hide his anger – he liked Sam a lot and had a huge amount of respect for his abilities, but that didn't mean he enjoyed being read at every moment, and have his emotions headed off before he'd had the chance to fully explore them.

"You're going to hold me hostage on this over a convicted murderer? This offer, this _team_ is a chance for us to do something truly extraordinary within the BAU, within the FBI as a whole, and you want to risk throwing it all away because I don't want to employ a criminal and give a convicted killer a gun and a badge. You think it's going to work out well for you when this blows up?"

"I think that's my risk to take," Sam pointed out. "If he's pardoned, and I see no reason why he won't be, can you really hold that case against him?"

"Yes, because at the end of the day I don't know how he'll react should another situation like that arise, and working in the BAU we both know that will happen sooner rather than later. I want agents I can trust, and frankly, Simms's actions seemed just a little too excessive and a little too much like vigilante justice to me."

"Look, a man died as a result of injuries he got from Simms, _that_ is irrefutable, but even if Simms was angry as hell and didn't care whether or not the UnSub lived or died, that does not mean he set out to murder the man – it was an accident, a horribly unfortunate accident that should never have seen him serve time in prison, let alone one like San Quentin. At least don't say no until I've tried for the pardon."

"I just don't know if this is something I can accept, Sam," the Director said with a sigh.

"Please, just think about it," the profiler pleaded.

"I'll think about it, but no promises."

"Thank you, Jack," Sam said earnestly.

"And last but not least, I suppose," Fickler said, pushing forward the slimmest folder in his bundle. "Michael Rawson?"

"It does get a little more complicated there," Sam admitted rather sheepishly.

" _More_ complicated?" the Director asked with surprise – how could it get more complicated than a convicted killer?

"I haven't exactly made it known yet and he's still technically in the British Army," Sam confessed.

"' _Technically'_?" Fickler asked, demanding further clarification.

"He's overseas right now as a member of the British SAS on a Special Operation," Sam supplied.

"That would explain why what little of his file we _do_ have is heavily redacted, but it doesn't really explain the _'technically'_ side of things," Fickler pointed out.

"Well I'm hoping that if… _when_ I do ask him, he'll leave the Army, but for now he is still enlisted," Sam said, slight misapprehension in his voice leaking through for all to hear. He really was dreading the day he might have to ask his friend to give up everything he knew to come and work for him in the States.

"You're _'hoping'_ , Sam?" the Director shook his head in dismay at just how complicated his old friend seemed intent on making the whole Red Cell affair. "This is a post that most agents would _kill_ for and you're not even sure if this Rawson will give you the time of day."

"He will – it's a good move and he's smart, Jack," Sam claimed stubbornly.

"He didn't even finish school, Sam!" Fickler exclaimed, pointing to the file.

"And you and I both know that school is not the be-all and end-all. Yes, he left school at sixteen and yes, he didn't go on to get a degree and yes, he has done nothing even vaguely related to academia since he left, but this kid is smart as hell with incredible instincts, and those talents are wasted on the military, no matter how goddamn 'S _pecial'_ the unit!"

"Sam…"

"No, Jack, let me finish," Sam insisted firmly. "The first time I met this kid was in Iraq and he gave me the lowdown on a HVT he'd been observing on a recon mission. He gave me a profile without even realising it and it was dead-on – he didn't talk to the guy, didn't hear one word of what he said or interact with anyone who knew him, but he managed to provide a dead-on profile from nothing more than observing the guy through a scope. I saw him talk down a suicidal soldier out there without a moment's hesitation and he was damn good at it, because he was able to crawl inside the guy's head and figure out the best way to get him to respond.

"He was _twenty_ years old! He did all of that and he was _twenty_ years old! He's young, yes, not even two years older than La Salle, but he is old before his time, trust me, Jack – this kid has been to hell and back, both before _and_ after I met him, and yet he still has the will and the wherewithal to make a difference. What little I know of his childhood, what I _do_ know about his time in the Army and what I am absolutely certain of in regards to his character will go a long way towards making him one hell of a profiler.

"Now he may not know his Aristotle from his Archimedes and maybe he doesn't know the first thing about the Bible, or Seventeenth Century French dramatists and Twentieth Century American poets, but none of that means _anything_ when you're face-to-face with a violent psychopath with a narcissistic personality disorder.

"He has the natural instincts for profiling, and thanks to the life he's led, he's learnt to keep his head in a crisis – he's calm and can be almost coldly logical when he needs to be, but he is still a passionate man, and to work in the BAU that is sorely needed or the world quickly becomes a dark and unforgiving place, as you well know. He can take orders but he's not so foolish as to do it blindly. He works well with others, no matter the personality clashes, and he can focus on the smaller details without losing sight of the bigger picture. He might not have the education or the training, but he's got all the raw materials there, Jack, I promise you.

"What's more, I'm well aware of the fact that I am a difficult man to know and therefore a hard man to trust, and I know that some of your friends in high places are doubting you, worried about not only your decision to rehire me for the FBI but also that you’re giving me such a high-profile position with a fair amount of freedom – they're worried that I will go my own way, do my own thing as a result of how things ended last time.

"I'm not going to pretend that I ever intend to follow orders blindly again like some goddamn Dudley Do-Right, but if you want to know that there is some way to control me, some way to reach through to me at the eleventh hour on the very _worst_ of days, then hire Mick Rawson, because out of everyone I know in the world, _he's_ the one who can read me best – he knows when he can step in and help me do something, he knows when he can stop me from doing something, and he knows when he doesn't have a chance at either and merely prepares to deal with the fallout, and he does it all without hesitation, without a word of complaint and reads me the riot act down the line.

"He's seen me at my worst, knows _everything_ I'm capable of, all that I've done and am ashamed of in this world – he's seen me through some of my darkest days and dealt with some of my darkest moods, and against all the odds he trusts me, and _I_ trust _him_ , absolutely and without doubt. I _want_ the others on my team, but I _need_ Mick."

Jack took a moment to let the words sink in. If this Rawson really was capable of reeling in Sam when his thoughts turned to hopelessness and despair as they were wont to do on occasion, then he would indeed be a valuable asset.

Sam's ability to get inside the UnSub's way of thinking was an incredible weapon in the BAU's arsenal, one that had helped lead to too many arrests to count, but that ability also left an indelible mark on the man's soul, which could often be seen in his more despondent and melancholic of moments. Someone to pull the man back from the brink, to stop him from burning out a second time, would not only ease the burden on Jack's shoulders and the worries on his mind about his old friend, but it would allow the Red Cell to function at full capacity, full time.

"I'll see what I can do about clearing up any problems there might be with his passport, but I imagine I'll have a bigger problem getting his education, or lack thereof, waived by the Brass."

" _You're_ the Director," Sam pointed out with a smile.

"Yes," Fickler agreed. " _Director_ , not _Dictator_. It's not always as straightforward at the top as they would have you believe, and there is always _someone_ else to answer to – a Red Cell team needs approval across the board if it's to manage full effectiveness, but I will do my best and use my title if I think they're starting to stonewall me.

"I imagine it will be easier to get Simms out of jail and on the job that to get Rawson out of the British Army and into the FBI," Fickler shook his head in dismay. He sat quietly and worked his way through all Sam had told him. He had wanted the man to form the Red Cell team because he trusted in his abilities and in his judgement, and despite the unorthodox choices he seemed intent on making, that hadn't really changed.

* * *

When Fickler finally got back to Sam after having taken his choices and his reasoning further up the chain, the Director was at the end of his tether. It had been a hard sell and more than Sam’s arse was now on the line.

"It's done," he said without preamble. “They will all need to go through some of the more important courses at the Academy, Griffith excluded, of course, seeing as how she is the only fully-trained FBI agent you seem intent on taking on. Once this has all been decided, I will pull La Salle from the Academy and she will go to the same classes as the others, and I expect clear and comprehensive reviews on _all_ of them from you until I am satisfied that they meet the FBI's exacting standards.

"When Griffith is done with her latest assignment, I will have her reassigned to your team – she's your problem then. I don't want to find transfer request papers two months down the line, so do what you have to do to help her settle into a more permanent position.

" _If_ you manage to get Simms pardoned, he _will_ be on probation – he needs to prove to me that he can be trusted to act reasonably and responsibly, no matter what crimes have been committed. He will have a gun and he will have a badge and if he screws that up there is not a thing I will be able to do to protect you, because I imagine I will lose my job long before you lose yours should we reach such an eventuality."

"We won't," Sam promised.

"Let's hope for _both_ of our sakes that you're right. _You_ will be the one to sort out Rawson – I will do what I can to make sure his passport isn't an issue and I will try to guarantee that he gets the green-light despite his lack of any formal qualifications, but _you_ will be the one to offer him the job and _you_ will be the one to ensure he accepts. If he's as good as you say he is then I doubt the SAS will want to let him go quite so easily, so see what you can get worked out – I want this team up and running as soon as possible."

"I'll see to it. He's in Afghanistan on a Special Operation at the moment, and they never have a clear end-date, but I would rather ask him face-to-face – I'll need time to fly over to the UK and see what I can get sorted out."

"The FBI will pay for the airfare," Fickler offered generously with a dismissive wave of his hand – as if a simple ticket was the hardest thing to come out of the conversation. "I hope you can get him – a soldier with the sort of contacts he's likely to have may well come in very useful, especially with regards to counter-terrorism, and it's always nice to have your own high-man on the team. I will give you a month to inform every one of your choices, longer for Rawson if you need it, and to get their responses – then I want you back in DC, working on their training and getting the team ready for action asap. Understood?"

"There is just _one_ more request I have," Sam started hesitantly, already aware that Fickler had gone above and beyond in terms of leniency for the Red Cell team so far.

"This should be good," Fickler sighed rather impatiently as he leaned back in his chair.

"I don't want the team to be based at Quantico. In fact, I don't want them based in any FBI office."

"So where _do_ you want the team?" Jack asked, curiosity over-riding his previous impatience.

"In DC, somewhere – somewhere close by should we be needed, but not in an FBI office, not in an office of any stripe, to be honest. I'll find somewhere where the rent is cheap and we have the space and facilities needed, but I don't imagine this team will function well in the typical Bureau setting."

"What could possibly give you that idea," the Director said sotto voce, sarcasm dripping from every word. "And, of course, it is no real reflection of your own opinion regarding offices, I'm sure."

"Of course," Sam smiled somewhat sheepishly, glad that his future in the FBI was not going to be contained within four walls of bureaucracy and office politics. "I'm assuming we'll have access to the FBI's technical analysts? Or do I need to go and find someone…?"

"You can use the technical analysts we have working for the BAU," Fickler interrupted quickly. "I don't want you going out and finding some hacker who tried to crash Wall Street or take over the International Space Station."

"Well, I've heard Penelope Garcia would be capable of that and more," Sam said dryly.

"She mostly works with Hotchner's team, although I'm sure there will be times your paths cross. We have a few others you can work with, too. I'll sort it out closer to the time."

"Sounds good," Sam smiled. It seemed as though the Red Cell was coming together, and against all the odds, it seemed as though the Director was agreeing to his choices.

"We'll see," Fickler said, his doubts still plain to see. "I'm trusting you with a lot here, Sam – please don't let me down."

"I'll do my best," Sam promised. He had the Director's permission and the easy bit was over, now he actually needed to _gather_ his team.


	16. Chapter 16

Mick's apartment in Swansea was small but comfortable. It was in a relatively modest part of the city and so he could afford the extra bedroom to house his rare guests. The kitchen was positively tiny but fully functional and he had a small balcony off the living room that afforded a beautiful view of the River Tawe heading out towards the sea. It wasn't on the beach, but it was only a short walk away and being on a slight hill, he could see the belt of sand stretching around the bay. Most importantly of all, perhaps, was the little café down the street that served the _best_ coffee he'd ever tasted.

He was reasonably far from most of his friends in the Army – some chose to live on-base in barracks, happy as single men to go out and find what entertainment they could and then return to the uncomplicated comfort of Regimental housing. Others had chosen to live with their friends and families, spread out across the UK and only heading towards Credenhill when duty and need demanded it.

There was only one other man from the Regiment that he knew in Swansea – David Pryce. Pryce was a senior figure in the SAS – he rarely saw live action any more, spending most of his time over the past two years _planning_ the missions rather than _leading_ them (and bitching about that very fact when he'd had a few beers too many), but he was often out and about in Credenhill and Hereford and he got on well with most of the men under his purview.

He and Mick had instantly bonded when they found themselves as two members of a small group of red shirts inside the Regiment during the Six Nations, eventually celebrating Wales' 2008 grand slam win and collecting their winnings together with great glee from the sour Scots, the irate Irish and the envious English. From that moment on, the two had become allies in all things sports-related and Welsh, taking the jibes at their football teams with good humour and repaying the favour when the rugby season came around.

Pryce, too, had decided to move off-base when his presence wasn't required full time, and he had headed back to his home town of Swansea, along with his wife and two children. He and Mick occasionally met up for a few beers at a local pub to watch a match together or simply to unwind with someone who tacitly understood the tumultuous emotions coursing through their systems after a hard tour of duty – Mick even had a standing invitation to join Pryce and his family for Sunday lunch.

With the comfort and security of his own apartment, a few friends and his childhood haunts only a stone's throw away, slowly but surely Swansea had become Mick's home again. He was rarely there, of course, but it was nice to have a retreat, a sanctuary that had nothing to do with the military. He'd originally toyed with the idea of following his sister and many of his friends to London, as the vibrant city offered a lot of temptations, but in the end he wanted to stay in the city in which he was born – it was the last real tie to his parents and not one he wanted to give up. Besides, now that Danny was back in London with Jenna, he had a couch ready and waiting for him should he ever want to visit the place – he was sure he could endure a couple of awkward mornings with his best friend and his sister being all domestic for the sake of a reunion.

He'd originally shared with Danny back in barracks at the SAS base of operations at Credenhill, but when his older friend had started getting serious with his little sister it was deemed better (and safer) for all concerned if they found their own places. Mick didn't mind moving – he'd only lived in barracks for as long as he had due to the financial imperative of it all, but he much preferred his own space.

Not since he had been a child in his parent's home had he had his very own room. During his time in and out of foster care he had often had to share his room, and his time on the streets had provided anything but privacy – indeed, often it was much safer to share a squat with several other people in an effort to ward off possible attacks. Time and experience in barracks had been the source of many an anecdote over the course of the years and Mick could not deny that there had been many times when the enforced closeness and the camaraderie that naturally followed on from that had overridden any real sense of loss at the lack of privacy.

He'd experienced all of that and it had helped to mould him, strengthen him, but he'd wanted something different, something more, something his. Now, he had his own place in Swansea with a relatively short two-hour train ride back to Hereford as the only thing standing between him and his room at Credenhill – not bad for a lad from Wales who had at one stage not even had a cardboard box to call his own.

Sam Cooper was coming in from the States and Mick had made a quick trip to the shops – he could cook, necessity having long ago produced _some_ technical skill in the art, but many nights he'd reach for a bowl of cereal or a slice of toast instead of a saucepan when he lacked the energy to cook something more substantial. Unfortunately, that often meant that his cupboards were bare beyond the essentials of coffee, milk, cereal and bread.

The mother hen that Cooper seemed intent on being around Mick had ensured the younger man bought all the fruit and vegetables imaginable to fill his fridge. He had even bought orange juice as an alternative to coffee, although he had always thought it a little hypocritical of Coop to comment on _his_ caffeine intake given the man's own dependency.

He'd offered to pick Sam up from Heathrow, but Coop had said that he'd enjoy the train journey from London to Swansea, using it as a means of unwinding after his long flight. Mick had tried to reason with him, sure that with a response like that the older man had clearly had _very_ little experience with the British rail network – travelling by train in the UK was anything but relaxing. However, Coop had insisted, and Mick couldn't deny that the thought of being spared a four hour each-way car journey had been a welcome one. So instead, he'd straightened up his already mostly neat apartment, done the shopping and then sat back and watched crap on television as he waited for his friend.

He wasn't entirely sure _why_ Coop was flying out to see him – it had only been just under two months since he'd last seen the man and they'd certainly had greater gaps between seeing each other or even talking on the phone or swapping an e-mail. He hoped everything was ok with the older man, but his tone on the phone had been off – Mick couldn't place the source of it at all and could only hope that his job at the FBI hadn't already fallen into disaster – perhaps the Director had taken Coop's proposed team as a slap to the face and reacted in kind.

A knock at the door brought him out of his reverie and he cursed heavily in Welsh under his breath – he'd offered to go and pick Coop up from the station to save on the taxi fare – they might not charge London rates but taxis were _never_ cheap. However, it seemed that Coop, stubborn bastard that he was, hadn't even called to say what train he was on and had instead just headed right on over.

"Heya, mate," he said as he opened the door. Cooper looked tired and somewhat anxious and Mick still had no idea why that should be, but gestured the man inside quietly and headed straight for the kettle – it was late in the evening, but not too late for coffee… _never_ too late for coffee.

After getting the man settled and exchanging the basic pleasantries, Mick watched his friend and waited patiently for him to talk, to give voice to whatever it was that was bothering him.

"I…er…I spoke to the Director," Sam said, finally breaking the long silence as he stared intently at the swirling black mass of coffee steaming away in his mug.

"He said _'no'_?" Mick guessed, trying to figure out if that was why his friend seemed to be in so decidedly an uneasy mood.

"At first he thought I was joking," Sam laughed mirthlessly. "But I explained my reasoning and he eventually seemed to realise that I was being quite sincere, and that perhaps my proposed team wasn't quite as crazy as it seemed at first."

"Well, that's a good thing, isn't it?" Mick asked, perplexed by his friend's sullen disposition – if he'd talked the Director around to his point of view regarding his team, surely _that_ was half the battle, if not most of it.

"I'd been working on getting Simms pardoned, I tell you that?"

"You mentioned it in passing, yeah," Mick nodded. "Did it fall through?"

"No, not at all," Sam shook his head. "The Director helped expedite the matter and Jonathan Simms is now a free man with a full pardon to his name. I offered him the position, he went away and thought about it for a few days, and now he's enrolled in a few classes at the Academy along with Gina and well on his way to becoming an agent of the FBI's Red Cell team."

"That's great!" Mick exclaimed. He knew the pardon was no sure thing, and he also knew that getting the full pardon was likely the best chance Simms had to a future with the FBI, or indeed any future at all.

"It is," Sam agreed earnestly.

"So why do you look like someone drowned your puppy right in front of you?" Mick asked, slightly exasperated, wishing the man would just say what was bothering him. "You got Simms and La Salle, obviously – did they not give you Griffin?"

"Griffith," Sam corrected absentmindedly. "The Director has agreed to reassign her to the team the moment her current assignment is over."

"Then what the hell is wrong?"

"The last team member…I desperately want him on the team but I'm afraid of what the consequences might be…when I ask," Sam said, finally looking up to watch his friend as the realisation sunk in.

"Oh," Mick said quietly, as _he_ became the one to avert his gaze.

"Yeah," Sam breathed out, glad to have finally got it out, just about, but already worried by Mick's response or lack thereof.

"You want me to leave the Army?" Mick asked quietly, still avoiding his friend's steady gaze, as his mind whirled around just what, exactly, his friend was asking.

"I do," Sam said softly but firmly – he'd made it no secret that he thought Mick could do something more with his life, so he saw no need to tip-toe around that particular topic now.

"You and Jenna must be in this together," Mick muttered.

"I imagine if Jenna found out I'd got you out of the military only to enrol you in the FBI she would have my head on a platter," Sam replied dryly.

"Nah, she's a teacher – she'd let you keep your head so you could learn your lesson. Won't stop her going after your balls, though," Mick replied with a small grin as he thought of his feisty little sister.

Sam laughed. Jenna was a waifish looking thing, small and elfin like in stature, dark, wild locks surrounding a pale face and large, plaintive eyes that suggested a meek and mild girl – it merely supported the belief that looks could be deceiving. While not as damaged as her brother, and therefore a lot less wary and far more trusting, Jenna was no one's push over and could be as fierce as Mick should the need arise – the most worked up he had ever seen the young woman was when she was arguing with Mick about his service in the military, and Sam, while feeling sorry for his friend, had been beyond relieved that her sharp tongue had not been wielded in _his_ direction.

His laughter soon died down though when he saw the furrowed brows and stormy look on Mick's face.

"Mick, I know I'm asking a lot of you…"

"Of _course_ you do!" Mick exclaimed, his anger finally forcing him to make eye contact. " _You_ , more than anyone, know what the Army means to me! You know, because I _told_ you – it is my home and my family, and that stays true even with Danny fucking off to Civvy Street!"

_That_ was partly why Mick was so angry, because he _had_ told Sam bits and pieces of his life before joining the military, and it had been particularly hard to do so as so very little of it could be spoken of with pride – broken bones, broken trust and fear during his time being passed around in the foster care system, and poverty, despair and crime during his time on the streets.

The Army had given him hope again, allowed him to see the potential in himself, see that there was something worth saving and developing, that his life could once again have purpose. It had also given him food and shelter, wages and an education, friends and family – it was not conventional and it did not come in the form most people would wish for it, but for Mick it had been beyond anything he had dared to hope for in many years.

He had never much liked school, found it boring and repetitive – really, how many times did he need to learn about the Tudors and the Industrial Revolution, or earthquakes and volcanoes, chlorophyll and the nitrogen cycle? He had been in and out of trouble – there had been frequent detentions and letters home, trips to the headmaster's office and the odd suspension before the whole circle started again. His test scores had always been high, but that had done little to improve his sentiments regarding school – the Army had allowed him to excel _outside_ of academia, and he'd never been made to think any less of his achievements simply because they didn't come with a degree at the end of it all.

"Mick, I only…"

"Don't, Coop. Don't you dare start trying to tell me that I'm wasted in the Army!" Mick said quietly but with a voice of cold, unyielding steel as he recalled past arguments.

"I _don't_ think you're wasted," Sam disagreed, clarifying his stance on the matter, all too aware that the few times they’d really argued it was on just this topic. "I _do_ think you're capable of so much more and I will never change my mind about that, nor will I apologise for it, because I've seen what you're capable of, both with a gun in your hand _and_ without it. You saved my life over there, and I know you've saved many others, too, so _of_ _course_ I wouldn't say your life has been wasted in the Army, but I can't deny I'm worried that one day someone won't be there to save _yours_ , especially now that Danny's going."

"You think _Danny's_ the only one who would risk his neck for me?" Mick asked, rather insulted at the implication, his anger and frustration too heightened to leave him in a receptive mood.

"Of course not, that’s not what I mean, but he's been by your side since the start and _no one_ knows you better out on the field of combat, no one will be able to anticipate you quite like him. You're my friend and I want you safe – is that so bad?"

"Safe? You’d call chasing down serial killers safe?" the sniper demanded incredulously.

"No, and I know it's hypocritical, I _know_ that! But I can't help it – maybe it's the control freak in me that thinks that if _I'm_ there things might end differently, or maybe I just think that your odds of survival are better _off_ the battlefield."

"And here I thought we _snipers_ are supposed to be the ones with control issues," Mick muttered caustically, as he got up and restlessly paced the small confines of his living room, never more aware of the size of his apartment than in that moment.

He knew that Sam was concerned about him each and every time he went out on active service, and it was irritating to be treated as though he were still a child that needed protection, and beyond infuriating that his capabilities were seemingly brought into question with every doubt the profiler voiced. It was also a testament of Sam's loyalty and devotion to his friends – _that_ was a large part of the problem.

Surely Cooper, as a seasoned profiler, knew just what _asking_ would do to Mick – surely he understood that some of Mick's anger stemmed from the feeling of being torn between his sense of obligation to the Army and his sense of obligation to his friend.

Mick had had very few close friends throughout his life and until he had joined the Army, he had quite reconciled himself with the fact that he may never find someone he could truly trust.

In his childhood, before everything had gone to hell, he had been quite good friends with a few of the kids in the neighbourhood, but no friendship at the age of ten was a particularly deep one, and certainly few were strong enough to pass through tragedy unscathed. Not one friend from his life before the loss of his parents had managed to stay a part of his life once he was thrown into the foster care system.

In care, he had been moved around so many foster homes and group homes that he had never been anywhere long enough to form any meaningful relationships, even if he had been in a frame of mind to accept any friendly overtures.

Amongst the homeless, close bonds were formed more out of necessity than anything else. On the streets there was relative safety in numbers, found to combat the many threats – police, gangs, thieves and others who were just as desperate to survive the cold winter nights, not to mention the sickos and weirdoes who clearly thought that being homeless equated to being up for anything. Mick had relied on a lot of people during his time on the streets, but he had never really _trusted_ anyone, let alone talked about anything personal, but then no one else had been particularly keen on sharing their life story, either – the friendships he had made in those dark days had been vital for survival but skin deep at best.

Mick had always been a social creature, someone who thrived with interaction, and those years between losing his parents and finding a home in the Army had been impossibly long and indescribably lonely. His sister had been the only constant in his life, but her new found parents had tried to limit their already limited interaction as much as they could – Mick shuddered to think what would have become of him had they tried to stop them from seeing each other at all.

So it was that when he finally joined the Army, he met Danny – he'd made other friends in basic, in the Paras and beyond, but through Danny, Mick had slowly learnt to reintegrate himself into society, relearnt what it was to both have and be a friend, rediscovered the simple pleasures of camaraderie that had been missing from his life for so long – impromptu games of football, messing around together in barracks with movies and poker, lively nights out followed by merciless teasing the morning after, and so much more.

Danny had been one of the few to work his way past Mick's walls, past every line of defence and through every character flaw. He'd learnt about Mick's past, about the tragedy and heartache, about the pain and fear, about the poverty and despair, and Mick had never once felt judged for it. Danny had not pitied him for the tragic end to his childhood, nor had he held Mick's life of petty crime while on the streets against him, but instead he had admired his younger friend for facing all of that and for moving past it – he'd never made Mick feel like a victim, but like a survivor.

Mick had made friends other than Danny, but the spotter was the only one who knew everything, and Mick had felt somewhat resigned to the fact that he was not likely to meet many people like Danny, who would take the time and effort to see what lay beneath all the defensive posturing, who would think all that effort was worth it, who did so for reasons of real friendship and not simply to satisfy their idle curiosity.

Then he met Sam Cooper.

Cooper had been somewhat of an anomaly in the deserts of Iraq when they first met – the man had clearly not been regular army, but the sheer number of military personnel seeking his help and opinion had been substantial. Mick had heard the scuttlebutt about him before actually meeting the man – interrogation expert embedded with the Marines, quiet and keeps to himself, not at all impressed with base politics.

During that first meeting, he had caught the way Sam had given him a quick once over, profiling him as best as he could with what little had been in front of him – Mick knew his age and the fact that he was a sniper had most likely been the biggest contributors to the final result. He also knew that whatever else Sam had taken from him in that first short meeting had encouraged the older man, for whatever reason, to form a friendship with the young Para.

Even in those early days of being introduced to Sam's former profession, he knew that snipers already had a profile pretty well set in stone, and he had hoped, rather than had known, that Sam did not subscribe to that view, thinking of Mick as some unfeeling, egotistical maniac armed with a rifle and a god-complex.

In time, Sam's regard for him had become clear, his mother-hen tendencies making it all too apparent that he had taken an interest in the Welshman's wellbeing, even if Mick couldn't say why that was. During that first tour together, before the disastrous ambush, Mick and Sam had often found themselves in each other's company around base – sharing a coffee in the mess tent, talking sport in the queue for the latrines, working through a crossword at dinner and so much more. They hadn't shared much personal information by that stage, but they had quickly found common interests and shared a gallows' humour approach to life in the military.

Coop had been there when Gavin Eaden, a friend from the Paras, had, in a moment of despair, threatened to shoot himself – terrible personal problems back home, which had been impossible to sort out in the deserts of Iraq, had culminated in near tragedy. After Mick had managed to talk him down, Sam had taken the man away from everyone and talked to him quietly for over an hour and a much stronger Gav had left the tent at the end of it all, ready to face the consequences of his actions with his head held high.

It had been in that moment, when Sam had willingly put himself between Gav and his superior officers, firmly stuck up his middle finger at protocol, consequences be damned, and done what was right for the distressed man rather than what the military would demand of him, that Mick knew with absolute certainty that Sam Cooper was a man worthy of respect, a man worth knowing and calling friend.

He had been surprised to find Sam hovering outside his hospital door a few months down the line – they'd only had eight weeks of friendship before Mick ended up as a POW, and after five weeks of hell and several more recuperating in various medical institutions, he had not expected to discover that Coop would fly to the UK after his own exhausting tour of duty to find out how he was doing in person.

It had been a surprise, but a welcome one. He had thought highly of the friendship that had quickly bloomed in the desolate landscape of the Iraqi desert, perhaps because such friendships normally seemed so far out of his reach, but experience had long since taught him that after suffering such an ordeal, enduring friendship was _not_ guaranteed. Sam had seemed bound and determined to prove otherwise.

From his hospital bed, Mick had had little choice but to watch as Cooper did what he could to distract him from the painful injuries and the horrific memories of his recent capture, as well as how the older man took the time and effort to make sure Danny was coping and that Jenna, a complete stranger to the American, had not been overwhelmed by the pitiable state of her brother.

It had been clear from the get-go that Cooper had his own ghosts haunting him from the past, and his seeming lack of interest in returning to the States had certainly aroused Mick's curiosity, but the kindness and understanding with which he was treated by the man had prevented him from prying.

By the time Selection came around, he and Sam had been in steady contact, talking about anything and everything, and during that time, Coop, with his seemingly never-ending stream of patience, had talked to Mick about his time as a POW and got him to reconcile with some of the more difficult aspects he had suffered through. The Welshman was pretty sure that he only passed the psychological vetting process more because of the steady and supportive help provided by his friend rather than anything the military in-house shrinks had ever done.

Once he'd reached the dizzying heights of the SAS 22nd Regiment, Mick occasionally found himself running into Coop while overseas for some of the more unsavoury aspects of the job – namely interrogation. After watching the man perform many masterful interrogation sessions without resorting to violence or threats of any kind, Mick had truly begun to appreciate just how talented his friend was and what the FBI had lost with his resignation from the Bureau.

Mick had thankfully had little to do with the actual interrogation process itself, but he had been forced to watch from afar as the effects of the job began to wear down on the former profiler. As he had seen his friend's happiness deteriorate with the demands of his job, Mick had tried to reason with him, tried to get the man to understand that leaving the military would not count as a failure, that there was life and purpose beyond it. He had tried long and hard to convince Sam that returning to the FBI's BAU was not only a viable option, but a favourable one – he could return and face up to whatever it was that was haunting him and he could put his skills to use without being asked to overstep the ethical lines that the military seemed far more flexible with.

When Sam had first told him about the Red Cell team, he had been excited for his friend – it had seemed as though Coop was being afforded the opportunity to make his own team and the very nature of a Red Cell unit would mean that many of his initial hang-ups about his earlier work at the BAU would be bypassed. It would help, too, having the Director himself on side, and the two old friends clearly shared several goals if the creation of the Red Cell in the first place was anything to go by. The team Cooper had described to him had certainly seemed unconventional, but Mick had faith in the older man and knew that Sam could achieve almost anything he set his mind to, given enough time and energy.

He was, of course, saddened that he would see even less of his friend, as their commitments to their respective jobs would keep them apart and afford them even fewer chances to meet up, separated not just by their work, but by an ocean and a mountain of other obstacles. However, he had also been glad that Cooper hadn't asked him to join the team, glad that he would not be forced to make a choice between the Army and one of his few true friends.

Until now.

He was tired after a long and disastrous operation. He and his team had been asked to go back overseas months ahead of their next tour due to the location of the mission, an area in which that they had performed extensive reconnaissance work almost four months ago. His team knew the landscape, the dry riverbeds and the rocky crevices, better than just about any of the other soldiers in the AO and as a stealthy approach was vital for the safety of the five civilian hostages being held there, their knowledge had been deemed necessary and they had been pulled in to help out.

After the arduous training exercises with US Tier One groups, and the solemn affair of Simon Wallcroft's funeral, Mick knew that he would not be going to Afghanistan in the best frame of mind, and going without Danny would only further serve to unbalance him, but he was ready and able to perform the task set before him.

Then it all went to hell through pure chance and a string of bad luck – there had been a few casualties and a couple of fatalities, one an FNG who had only just turned twenty-three and the other a father of four. All of the civilians had been saved and the Taliban forces in the area had suffered heavy losses, but the cost of the operation was still being felt across the Regiment, as yet more funerals were being prepared.

Mick had returned home to Swansea, eager for a chance to wipe the bloody images from his mind and unwind for a few months before having to think about anything even vaguely related to the military. Sam's visit had offered the Welshman hope for a friendly distraction, but instead he had merely supplied further complications.

Coop had been nervous, which at least indicated that he knew his job offer would not be a straightforward affair to be met with a smile and a handshake, but he still seemed to underestimate exactly what the Army meant to Mick, and profiler or not, he should have understood that fact as his friend instead of letting his own biases get in the way.

Asking him to leave the Army was bad enough, but asking him to chase down serial killers seemed absurd. Simms had ended up in prison for Voluntary Manslaughter when a child molester had died from injuries acquired during his arrest, whether or not he had actually intended to kill the man wasn't something _he_ was ever likely to know – what he _did_ know was that if _he_ came face-to-face with some sick son of a bitch who had just forever violently altered a family, he would find it _very_ hard to ignore his own past, struggle not to enact some kind of revenge by proxy.

Even ignoring the very personal reasons he had for doubting his suitability to chasing down serial killers, reasons that, to be fair, Cooper knew nothing about, he had just found a home, and now one of his closest friends, one who should know better than anyone what that meant to him, was asking him to move away and leave it all behind.

He was too tired and too angry to be calm and rational, to think about Coop's offer as anything other than a betrayal of the understanding that had existed between them for years.

"I need to get out of here," Mick muttered, throwing up his arms in despair, unable to put his many jumbled thoughts into any kind of cohesive sentence. He was undeniably angry, but after everything they had been through together the last thing he wanted to do was punch Cooper in the face and break his nose – retreat seemed the better part of valour.

"Mick…?" Sam called desperately after him as he saw his friend hastily leave his own flat.

He cursed heavily – he had known that his offer would be problematic, recognised that Mick had always been somewhat offended by Sam's insistence that he could do so much more with his life, understood that the job would demand more of him than anyone else.

Simms had a pardon and with it, freedom and a job offer, a second chance at life in an environment that would challenge him and allow him to utilise his abilities. La Salle was becoming an FBI Agent ahead of everyone in her class and doing so in style, with a prime posting that even her demanding father couldn't ignore or find fault with. Griffith was finding a post that would finally recognise her talents and enable her to use them to their full potential rather than them and her being dismissed with another complaint in her file.

Mick would leave a job he loved, his friends and family and even his country behind. He would always be an outsider – for his nationality, his career, his lack of education and his plethora of military skills, even his outlook would likely differ from the majority of the people he would come into contact with while working for the BAU.

Still, he hadn't expected his normally calm and relatively stoic friend to react in such a decidedly affronted manner.

Sam sat heavily back down on the sofa, expelling a large sigh as he wondered what the hell he was supposed to say and do now.

* * *

He didn't know how many hours had passed, but Sam had made his way through four cups of coffee when a knock at the door shook him out of his stupor. He got up from the sofa, unsure of who would be calling at such a ridiculously early hour – he hoped it was Mick, who had left in such a hurry that he went without his keys or even his phone.

When he opened the door, however, it was not Mick. The man standing in front of him looked familiar, but Sam couldn't place him. He was tall and broad in the shoulders. His dark black hair was peppered with a few greys that added an air of distinction to his already somewhat grave countenance. His grey eyes were staring at Cooper with a thoroughly assessing gaze that the profiler found more than a little uncomfortable.

"Hello?" he asked hesitantly.

"Agent Cooper," the man nodded. "David Pryce."

Sam shook the proffered hand and recognised him as someone from within the Regiment, a high-ranking officer that Mick had talked of with great respect and a degree of warmth that hinted at more than a typical officer/subordinate relationship.

"Come in," Sam gestured. "Mick's not here at the moment."

"I know," Pryce replied. "He's passed out on my couch after drinking over half a bottle of my good scotch." He frowned heavily at Sam, making it evident who he held accountable for _that_ particular occurrence.

"Damn," Sam muttered quietly to himself, turning away from the stern looking soldier in front of him as he grappled with the turbulent emotions that hit him at the thought of driving Mick towards drowning out his worries with alcohol.

"Ah, don't worry – he's a grown lad and besides, he was due a little piss-up session, get rid of some of that excess angst. If it hadn't been my _good_ scotch I'd probably be thanking you," Pryce commented wryly.

"He tell you why?" Sam asked nervously.

"You mean did he tell me that you're here to try and steal one of my best soldiers?" Pryce replied, a small smile pulling at the corner of his mouth as he tried to restrain himself – he was used to his soldiers squirming in front of him when they'd screwed up, not so much with those outside of his purview. "He might have mentioned something about a job offer you made him, yeah. Then again, when an FBI request comes in for a personnel file that _does_ tend to raise a few questions. Don't worry," Pryce added when he caught the momentary wince on the other man's face. "I didn't say anything – thought that was best left to you."

Sam scrubbed a heavy hand across his face, sure that he'd just invited another rebuke – his shame and determination to avoid eye contact meant that he missed the look of amusement passing over the other man's face.

"I doubt he's got anything as decent as the scotch back at mine he just knocked back, but I feel strangely comfortable going through his drinks selection and making more than a bit of a dent in it. Come on, let's go see what he's got stocked up."

With that, Pryce wandered into the small, open-plan kitchen, bypassing the fridge that would inevitably hold a few bottles of beer and heading straight to the cupboard where he knew Mick stored the stronger stuff. He poured out a couple of glasses of whisky and, bottle on hand, settled down on a chair across from where the other man had sunk bonelessly into the sofa.

Pryce had seen Cooper around when the man had been embedded with the US Marines, and had even watched a couple of his interrogations on high-value targets during the odd joint operation – he'd always come across as intelligent and passionate, with a strong sense of morality. The veteran had also looked on as one of his most untrusting young soldiers had flourished under the profiler's influence.

When Rawson had first joined the SAS, he was desperate to prove, to himself more than anyone else, that his capture in Iraq had had no lasting effects. He'd been defiant and doggedly determined and although he had managed Selection well enough, Pryce had had reservations about the young man and all that he had been through.

In time, the young sniper had more than proven himself to everybody and had quickly earned a solid reputation inside the Regiment – older soldiers valued the FNG's opinion informed by his intelligence and tactical prowess, and _everyone_ had wanted that skill behind a rifle on their team. In no time at all, Rawson lost the stigma of being the newbie and had found his place at Credenhill, easily settling into the more demanding nature of the Regiment as if he had been born for that very purpose.

Pryce had come to rely upon Rawson and the rest of his team for some of the more difficult recce missions, confident that with their combined skills there would be nothing missed. The sniper had done just as well with the regular soldiering as he had done with his long-distance shooting, and he had proven to be something of a savant when it came to disarming even the most complicated of IEDs.

While there had been one or two inevitable fatalities inside his Squadron, Rawson had yet to lose anyone in his Team, and Pryce believed that that was down to a little luck and an exceptional group of men with Rawson as one of the stand-out soldiers. He sorry to be losing Wallcroft – he was a damn good soldier with great instincts and together with Rawson they proved to be an unbeatable duo, surpassing every obstacle in their way. Danny was damn good, but he was replaceable – Mick was not. Pryce imagined it would be a very long time before they came across anyone who possessed Rawson's natural skill with a rifle, let alone someone who possessed all of his other skills, too.

He wasn't supposed to have favourites, but he did – whether it was down to their shared heritage, their similar military profiles, their rugby-induced friendship or something more instinctual, he couldn't say, but what he _could_ say with absolute certainty was that he had come to care for Mick Rawson a great deal.

So it was that when the younger man ended up knocking on his door in the dead of night, visibly distressed and asking for a place to crash when his own apartment was not even a fifteen-minute walk away, he was worried and curious about the cause of it all. He'd told his wife, who had come to regard the younger man as family, that he would try his best to sort this out and that she should return to bed, eager to avoid seeing her passionate temper rise on behalf of the troubled sniper.

He'd caught sight of the anger pulsing away beneath the surface and, as he'd practically poured the scotch down Rawson's throat in an effort to calm him, silently bemoaning the fact that he had nothing but the good stuff left in his liquor cabinet, he got bits and pieces of the story.

Pryce knew what the military meant to Mick, knew and understood as it had once been the same for him, too. But whereas Pryce had managed to find a life _beyond_ the uniform, marrying and settling down, starting a family and forming roots, Mick had seemed almost determined to avoid all of that.

The only family he had was Jenna, and although that was certainly not his fault, the young Welshman seemed bound and determined to keep it that way. Resolutely keeping any relationships brief and meaningless, Mick flittered from one girl to the next with little interest in anything beyond a night or two of pleasure and positively fleeing from the very idea of settling down. All of his friends were somehow connected to the military and most of them were slowly starting families of their own. Mick had never even been on holiday, only travelling overseas with the Army for combat or for training.

Mick was a social creature by his very nature, but life had made him wary, made him pause and assess before joining in and even then he tended to keep a large part of himself hidden away from public view, and so despite thirsting for company, Mick's rather insular world more often than not kept him apart from it.

Pryce had seen just how good Cooper's friendship had been for the young sniper, bringing out a less wary, more playful side to his nature and evoking smiles and laughter that were less cynical and more genuine. He had watched as the profiler challenged Mick and encouraged him, raising the man's confidence in regards to more than just his abilities with a rifle.

To say that he was shocked to discover Cooper had been the cause of his friend's distress would be an understatement and if he'd suspected any deliberate malice in the man then FBI or not, Cooper would be flat out on the floor. However, out of respect for him and for his friendship with Mick, Pryce felt he owed the man the chance to explain himself.

"So, do you want to tell me what the hell you said to get a soldier that's normally pretty level-headed all fired up?" Pryce asked, although it was clear from his tone that the request was for the sake of manners only, and that one way or another he would get answers. He'd already had a somewhat rambling explanation from Mick, but now he wanted the other side of the story before he could decide on what to do.

Pryce waited patiently for the profiler to start, and listened intently as Cooper explained his reasons for asking, about how he thought Rawson could be destined for something greater than the military if only he'd allow himself to think of the possibilities. He paid attention to the amount of respect and admiration the profiler clearly had for the sniper, not just in regards to his military prowess, but for Mick's intelligence, his determination and his compassion. He also understood that protective instinct, the one that cried out and said that if ever there was a man who needed another person in his corner, shielding him from harm and helping fight the many battles that seemed destined to flood his way, it was Mick Rawson.

"I grew up in Swansea, lived here most of my life did you know that?" Pryce asked, after Sam had finished his explanation.

Momentarily confused by the non sequitur, Sam shook his head – it was clear by the accent that the man was Welsh, but the American still didn't have much of an ear for the subtleties between British regional accents.

"Mick doesn't know because I've never presumed to be the one to talk to him about it, but I know what happened to his family, and I don't just mean the bare facts as they are in his personnel file.

"It made the national headlines, of course, but the story died down pretty quickly once the next tragedy came along and everyone more of less forgot all about it – in Swansea, not so much, at least for a little while. The murders were in the papers and on the television for months afterwards, and I can still vividly remember the front page and an image of a young boy, crying and bloody, being carried from the scene by a police officer."

Sam stayed silent, not sure what to say and torn between asking the soldier to stop and letting him continue. The tragedy of Mick's childhood remained the one topic untouched between them – the consequences had been touched upon and the experiences that followed with foster care and the streets had all been explored somewhat but the actual life-changing event remained a mystery to Sam.

He wanted to tell Pryce to stop, not to say anymore and to respect Mick's privacy, but an even greater part of him was curious to know the truth, and the profiler in him was positive that the formative events were, in part, why Mick was so conflicted over the prospect of a career inside the BAU.

"Two men forced their way inside the Rawson family home in the run-up to Christmas, and proceeded to kill the mother, the father and the oldest daughter. The boy had managed to hide his younger sister before he was dragged downstairs and forced to watch as his family were killed one by one in front of him.

"Obviously the papers left out the more disturbing details, but I had a friend who worked in the police force at the time and he told me more than he probably should have done after a few pints. So I knew about the level of brutality, knew about the ten-year-old who was whisked off to hospital, and I knew all about the brother and sister being split up after the fact.

"Of course, once the trial was over and done with, even the people of Swansea wanted to forget, and eventually I didn't think anything more on it, until some scrawny kid named Rawson found his way into the Regiment. I knew straight away it was him, that same kid from the front page looking back at me with impossibly sad eyes was now in front of me, defiant and determined.

"Oh, sure, I felt sorry for him at first, when I realised who he was and what he'd been through, but he has done everything since to prove to all and sundry that he is nobody's victim, that he has faced down the very worst the world has to throw at him and not only survived it, but has come out the stronger for it. The Army helped him get over one of the worst events in his life and you should remember that, think on what it may mean to him as a result of that.

"Michael Rawson is one hell of a soldier. His sniping capabilities are second to none and his tactical analysis is instinctual – I've never come across anyone who is better at sizing up a situation within seconds. He is a dutiful soldier but he doesn't follow orders blindly, having the intelligence and the wherewithal to think for himself. He is a born leader, with his natural intelligence and charisma succeeding in causing even the older, more experienced soldiers to pause and listen to his opinion. He has shown himself to be a brave and heroic member of the Regiment, who has never paused, even for a moment, to throw himself headfirst into danger to do what is right.

"And over the years I've come to care for him a great deal. He's not alone in the world, not anymore, not by a longshot, but after all he has been through and the emotional consequences that followed, I’ve seen that his world can be a lonely place, nonetheless. I've also seen how much your friendship has changed him over the years – he's still damaged and likely a part of him always will be, but he's far more grounded now than he has ever been in all the years I've known him – he's calmer, less reckless, more hopeful.

"I agree with you, Agent Cooper," Pryce said with a small, sad smile. "He _can_ do so much more with his life – he will always be one of the finest soldiers I have ever had the privilege of serving alongside, but like you, as his friend, I think he deserves more in his life.

"But _you_ need to remember that the idea of a life beyond the military is a new concept to Mick – he has spent entirely too many years thinking that his trigger finger is about all he has to offer the world and he's not likely to do a one-eighty at the drop of a hat. Right now, he's focusing on what he would _lose_ by leaving the Army, and not on what he would _gain_ – give him some time, let it sink in, allow him to realise and to understand exactly _what_ it is you're asking of him and more importantly, _why_."

Sam nodded, glad to have found an ally, no matter how unlikely it had seemed when Pryce first came knocking at the door. He knew that Mick respected the older man, knew that he had struck up a quiet but strong friendship over the years of his service inside the SAS, and the profiler could only hope that it would mean the younger man would take a step back and listen to what Pryce had to say on the matter.

"Don't think it means I'm going to let him go without a fight," Pryce said firmly, even as his eyebrows arched with a wry expression as he easily read the emotions passing over Sam's face. "I'll explain my opinion, make sure he understands his choices, but like I said, he's one hell of a soldier and as far as I'm concerned he still has a few more years in him yet – you don't _need_ him now, you _want_ him now, as do I. But he's not just my soldier, he's my friend and at the end of the day it's his decision and if he wants to stay in the Army, I'm not going to fight him on it – in fact I'd buy the lad a bottle of Champagne. If he decides he wants to leave altogether…well, I'd support him in that, too.

"However…there _may_ be another way…a way we can do the best thing for Mick and both get what we want," Pryce trailed off pensively. "So, with all that said and done, give me a few days to get up to Credenhill and ask around about some of the possibilities I've got rattling around my brain. Until then, _don't_ push him!"

"I think it's a little too late for that," Sam laughed bitterly.

"He just came back from a difficult tour," Pryce frowned. "Did you ever meet Waters?"

"Er…no," Sam shook his head. "But Mick told me about him – new to the Regiment, different teams but he's in the same Squadron as Mick, I think."

"Was," Pryce corrected. "Mick had taken the lad under his wing, an orphan with nothing but the Army in his life, didn't even have his own Wallcroft – I'm sure you can guess why Mick felt drawn to him. He died in Mick's arms not even four days ago – when you are quite literally the only thing holding a man's guts inside his body, trust me…that takes more than a few days to get over. Everything's just a little too close to the surface right now and you offering him this job is just another thing he doesn't want to think about just yet."

"He never said anything," Sam said sadly.

"He rarely does – he'd learnt to suffer in silence long before the Army ever got its hands on him. If you plan to take him over to the States and put him to work for the FBI, you're going to need to learn to read him and understand that what he _does_ say is very rarely what he's actually feeling – as a profiler, I'm sure you'll figure it out soon enough," Pryce joked as he headed towards the apartment door, content that he'd done all he could.

"We profilers are far from infallible," Sam said, not even remotely joking.

"Oh, trust me, I know. You profilers are wrong about all sorts as far as I'm concerned," Pryce said earnestly. "Your profiles regarding snipers are fundamentally flawed, in my opinion – there seems to be a huge supposition that they are lone wolves, that they do the job they do and keep people at a distance same as they do through their scopes, that targets are not people but conquests, that they remain unaffected.

"There is no sniper in the military world who is _just_ a sniper. Mick, and others who possess his prowess with a rifle, will still spend most of their time in combat reliant upon their assault rifle – nine times out of ten, they're on the ground with the rest of the unit, just as up close and personal with the enemy as any regular infantryman, and just as affected by it.

"The assumption that they remain unaffected by the lives they take because of the physical distance between them is short-sighted – you neglect to consider the fact that they have often watched their target for hours, sometimes even days before they take the kill-shot. Some are so decidedly affected by that level of intimacy that they cannot take the shot when the time comes, others are just stuck having nightmares in high definition of brain matter flying about the place.

"And the idea that snipers are lone wolves is beyond ridiculous. Most of the time when a sniper _is_ needed, it's in a combat situation and snipers are with the rest of the unit, they're simply the first line of defence because of the distance of effectiveness of their weapons. And when they _do_ have their own missions, they are very rarely alone – sometimes they'll have their teams, but they will almost always have their spotters.

"Mick is damn confident about his shooting ability – he has to be, given the risks and consequences any self-doubt may inspire. But if you truly believe that he spent his time in the military looking through a scope and remaining completely unsullied by what he saw through it, then you will screw him up more than any bad tour ever could," he warned the agent pointedly.

"That profile refers to LDSKs – Long Distance Serial Killers," Sam explained, his mouth a little dry at the unexpected reprimand.

"Semantics," Pryce shrugged. "And I can't imagine a lot of people stop to differentiate. Make sure _you_ do when it comes to Mick, because given his history he will not like being compared to your LDSKs, or serial killers of any stripe."

Sam gave an inelegant snort, thinking it absurd that he would ever do such a thing. He was a little more confident in the conversation due to the respectful way he had been treated by Pryce when he could just have easily have taken him to task for trying to poach one of his best soldiers, and so with a wry grin he asked, "I'm guessing before you took a job behind a desk, you were a sniper, too?"

"See, I told you you'd figure things out soon enough," Pryce smiled as he left.

* * *

For the few hours of darkness left, Sam had tried to get some sleep, but his worry for his friend and the large amount of caffeine flowing through his system kept him from it. It was getting light outside and he was making himself another cup when he heard the door open, and rushing into the narrow hallway he sighed with relief at the sight of his friend.

Mick looked exhausted – his clothes had obviously been slept in and were incredibly rumpled. His hair was a mess, sticking up all over the place and making the Welshman look vulnerable and at least ten years younger. His eyes were narrowed and his mouth pinched as though he was in pain.

"Are you ok?" Sam asked rather needlessly. Even if you ignored the crumpled clothes and the bags under his eyes, Mick's rather forlorn expression was hard to miss.

"A little hung-over," the Welshman confessed quietly. "I'll be fine in a few hours. Pryce said he came to see you after I fell asleep," he stated rather than asked.

' _Passed out'_ were actually the words Pryce had used, but Sam nodded his agreement, nonetheless. He wasn't really sure what to say and where to start – he was loath to upset his friend any further but he was equally reluctant to let things fester between them.

"I'm sorry, Coop," Mick said earnestly, interrupting Sam from his thoughts about how to start a conversation.

"What?" the older man was surprised, having thought his own apology was what was needed.

"You asked me a reasonable question, one I'd even suspected might be coming my way, and I…well I didn't exactly handle it with grace…"

"Mick…"

"It was a rough tour and I wasn’t ready to deal with anything else and I took it out on you – after everything you've done for me, you didn't deserve that…"

"Mick!" Sam interrupted loudly. "I don't blame you! I _do_ blame myself a little, because you were right – I _do_ know more than most just what the Army means to you. I _knew_ that, but perhaps I still don't really understand it, perhaps I never _will_ understand it given just how low my own opinion of the military was by the time I left.

"I was angry and disillusioned with the Brass and their orders, the means by which they expected me to do my job, and I carried that resentment over to all things military and that was wrong. You, your Regiment, the Marines I served alongside, most of the soldiers I knew over there… _you_ were not the problem, but in all my anger I lost sight of that. And if, with my own tempestuous experience in my job over there, I ever made you feel as though I was belittling you or what you held dear, then I'm sorry.

"But I didn't ask you to take the job because of how little I think of the military, rather because of how _much_ I think of _you_ ," Sam stressed. "I didn't even ask you just because you're my friend, although I can't deny that certainly factored into it.

"When I first met you, I was impressed by your perception and I was intrigued by the fact that the men in the UKSF seemed to hold such high regard for someone who was only twenty years old! Then I got to know you and I quickly learned why that was. Your skills with a rifle notwithstanding, you're a damn good soldier – your intelligence and tactical reasoning, your courage and determination, your kindness and patience, your loyalty and devotion.

"And it’s all those things that make you an excellent solider, an excellent _man_ , all those things the Army taught you and everything you were before… _that_ is why I want you!" Sam said firmly. "I am sorry if I ever made you feel like I didn't respect you or your career, but I cannot and will not apologise for wanting more in this life for you."

Mick nodded, unsure of what to say. He was used to being told that he was a good soldier, he'd even been told he was one of the best snipers in the world, and he could believe it, knew the standards required by the UKSF and had seen the very visible results of his skills over countless operations, but for the rest of it…a good man?

He had still not reconciled himself with everything he had done on the streets in order to survive – running drugs, stealing from struggling single mothers, from those younger and more desperate than himself. He could not look at his past and see anything that even vaguely resembled a good man.

The Army had given him a chance to redeem himself somewhat. He had helped pull people out of the rubble from an IED attack or from the devastating results of an earthquake, he'd helped deliver food and medical aid to some of the most desperate people in the world, he'd pulled mothers from the carnage of a landslide and children from rising floodwaters. He'd also saved the lives of the men and women he served alongside countless times. He had made a real and a very positive difference to the world with his work in the Army, and after everything the military had done for him, everything it had given him, it still seemed like a betrayal to turn away from it.

"There's something else you should know," Sam interrupted his thoughts. "When Pryce came to see me, he told me something…about you."

Mick frowned, trying to figure out what it could be, and then he realised that Pryce was a senior figure inside the SAS – he would have access to Mick's personnel file and all the skeletons in his closet.

"He's read my file - he told you what happened?" Mick reasoned. He didn't dare look at his friend, dreaded to see the pity that could well reside in Coop's eyes.

"No, he didn't tell me about what he'd read in your file, but he did tell me about what he'd read in the newspapers, seen on the news, and what he remembered while he was living in Swansea at the time."

"Bollocks!" Mick muttered quietly, closing his eyes and hanging his head in disbelief, before uttering a string of curse words in Welsh. He _knew_ that Pryce had been born and raised in Swansea, and he should have known, should have been able to work out had he stopped to think about it, that Pryce would have been in the city at the time everything went so very wrong in Mick's life.

"What did he tell you?"

"A lot," Sam confessed soberly. "I could have told him to stop, but I didn't, and I'm sorry – it was your story to tell. To be fair to Pryce, he only told me because he thought that I should understand _all_ of the reasons why my offer of a job at the BAU would cause you such heartache – he was just trying to look out for you."

Sam felt that he owed the veteran soldier some defence of his actions, as the man had clearly been concerned for his friend and had done what he thought was necessary to protect him and told Sam what he needed to know in order to understand his friend's rather volatile reaction. But Sam could not lie to Mick about knowing the details of his past – the consequences of that lie being uncovered would be unforgiving to say the least.

"I _should_ have been the one to tell you," Mick said, almost mechanically. He couldn't be mad at Pryce – the man had spent most of the night and a good deal of expensive alcohol sorting him out, when by all rights he should have reamed him out for appearing on his doorstep in the dead of night, disturbing him and his family. Still, after everything they had been through together, and everything they had shared, Mick felt as though he should have been the one to confide in Sam, and probably should have done so many years ago.

"I can understand why it's not a story you would enjoy telling," Sam replied, sympathetically.

"It was about a week before Christmas, and I was upstairs with Jenna – we'd been Christmas shopping that day, and we were determined to wrap all the presents we'd bought that night, too excited to even think about waiting. She was only six, I was ten, so I was helping her – there was wrapping paper all over the place and there was more tape on Jenna than on the presents. We'd almost finished when we heard the doorbell.

"We could hear Gwen, our older sister, answer the door…then we heard her scream. Jenna tried to get up and run down to her, but I told her she had to be quiet, told her not to move until I came to get her, told her she had to close her eyes and put her hands over her ears, pretend like we were playing hide-and-seek – she was so scared and crying as I pushed her under the bed. I shoved all of the presents in front of her, trying to hide her – then I crept to my parents' room where they had a phone. I was just about to pick it up when someone grabbed me from behind – I didn't even hear them.

"He was tall and very strong and I remember he kept saying that we were going to have a party. Son of a bitch was laughing. I struggled, tried to get away, of course, but then he broke my leg, stamped on it and snapped it in two like it was a twig. I tried not to cry out, knew that Jenna was just down the hall, but I couldn't help it."

Sam said nothing, worried about interrupting his friend even as he sought to comfort him, tell him that it was alright for a ten-year-old to admit to pain, that reacting to a broken bone was not a sin no matter what the circumstances were.

"He dragged me downstairs and threw me to the floor – I almost passed out for the pain. I remember the other guy started shouting at him, called him Darren and told him _I_ wasn't the one who needed to be punished. I didn't understand it, _any_ of it...I still don't.

“When I looked up, I saw my mother, my father and Gwen, all tied up and gagged, sitting on the sofa, crying and afraid. My dad kept trying to stand up and get to me but Darren kept shoving him back down, punching him, so I pushed myself up and tried to crawl to him, only for the second guy to grab me. He was smaller than Darren but still strong enough to carry me.

"I tried to punch him, tried to shout out and get him to let me go – he put his hand over my mouth until I stopped shouting. I had next to no fight left in me then and I remember he kept stroking my head, telling me that it was all going to be ok. When I told the police that, they seemed certain that he was a pervert, but it wasn't like that – it was more like a…a father comforting a child, you know? My dad used to do the same thing when I got upset – hold me close and tell me that everything would be ok, run his fingers through my hair in an effort to calm me down. That's what it was like with that second guy, as twisted as it sounds, it was nothing obscene or perverted, just like he was trying to comfort me, like I was his damn kid. I hated it! I just wanted my dad.

"While this guy was playing house, Darren was already after Gwen. He, er…he had a knife…" Mick shut his eyes. He could still hear the muffled screams, remember the way his father and mother tried to intervene, recall the way Darren had arched the blade through his father's chest as though it were mere paper, and not flesh and bone. He'd struggled in the stranger's grip, desperate to reach his family, but he had been helpless. He'd heard the two men quietly argue, but he couldn't remember what it was about, focused as he was on the ever-slowing rise of his father's chest.

"My dad tried to stop him, but there was nothing he could do, tied up like he was, and all that happened was that Darren got pissed off. It was only after my dad died that they asked about Jenna," Mick shook his head in an effort to dislodge the images flashing through his mind.

"I told them she was spending the night at a friend's, and that she wouldn't be back until later the next day. Darren seemed furious but the other guy, he just smiled at me, gave me this…this _look_ that said he knew I was lying. He sat me down on a chair and tied my hands together – I'd seen him punch Gwen for no reason whatsoever, and yet he kept talking to me like we were long-lost family. I was far more terrified of him than I ever was of Darren, for all that Darren seemed more violent and volatile.

"I _hated_ him!" Mick spat vociferously. "Darren was _easy_ to hate – he was crazy and violent and out of control, and _he_ was the one who seemed intent on hurting everyone. But the other guy, for all that he seemed happy enough just to watch, I'm pretty sure _he_ was the one behind it all – that he tried to be nice to me, tried to protect me, save me from Darren, just made everything so much worse, more confusing. But at the end of the day, he still sat by and made me watch as Darren killed my family, and he treated the whole thing like it was some kind of twisted bonding moment between the two of us.

"I kept thinking that surely someone would have heard the screams, but we were on the end of the terrace, there was a Christmas party going on at the pub the other end and I knew our next-door neighbours were on holiday – they always pissed off to somewhere warm for Christmas."

Sam watched on with concern – he wanted to say something but what? He knew Mick must be struggling with the emotions and images talking about such horrors must have dredged up. Hearing the story from Pryce had been one thing, he'd mourned for his friend's loss, of course, but Pryce had been recalling what he'd learnt from the rather disjointed news stories. Mick's story was a first-hand account and all the more terrible for the fact that his friend had been a mere child of ten at the time.

His profiling abilities automatically logged the details – how the one UnSub had been more focused on Mick than the killings, and how the lack of a sexual component to his seeming obsession hinted at him seeing a young Mick as a substitute for someone he sought an emotional proximity to rather than a physical one, perhaps even his own child. The violently volatile Darren, who had seemingly somewhat submitted to the other UnSub, had clearly got off on his crimes, relishing in the control over life and death, the use of a knife no doubt reflecting his own impotence.

Sam also heard the guilt in his friend's voice, the internal struggle as Mick sought to comprehend why such an atrocity had been carried out on his family and why _he_ had been spared – the self-recriminations and the doubts, such common emotions with survivor’s guilt, were seeping in with every other thought about whether or not the UnSub's mysterious interest in his younger self had brought about his family's demise.

Cooper wished he could tell his young friend that that was not the case, wished he could comfort him and give him the understanding he had so clearly been striving for all those years, but the profiler in him knew that there were few things as complex as the human psyche, that there would likely be no clear and comprehensible reason as to why those two men had wrought such damage upon complete strangers to them, and he knew Mick would sooner punch him for some meaningless platitude than take comfort in it.

"Do you need a break?" he asked the Welshman quietly.

"Suffice to say, no one seemed to be coming to the rescue," Mick carried on resolutely, grateful for his friend's thoughtfulness, but all too aware that if he was given the chance to distance himself from his terrible past for even a minute, he would not go back to it, not even for Sam.

"Darren took great pleasure in torturing my mum and Gwen, while the other guy just sat by me on the arm of the chair and held me down, kept talking to me. I closed my eyes when I could, but I couldn't block out the noises. You want to know one of my most vivid memories from that night? The sucking sound the wound made when the knife was pulled out – I don't think I'll _ever_ forget that. I don't know how long it lasted, but Gwen was dead and my mum was barely conscious when I finally heard them…the sirens.

"Darren panicked – he picked me up and stabbed me in the stomach. The other guy was furious – he grabbed Darren and threw him up against a wall, put a gun to his head. I don't know what he said but I know he dragged Darren out the backdoor before coming back to me. He took the knife out and pressed a blanket over my wound, told me to hold it there and that help would be there soon. Then he stabbed my mother in the chest, right into her heart – none of the torture that Darren had done, just quick and painless, before disappearing out the backdoor.

"I tried to crawl up the stairs to find Jenna, but I only made it to the first step before the police came in – I tried to get them to take me up to her, but they refused. I struggled, of course, opening up the wound – the ambulance wasn't there yet and none of them really seemed to know what to do, so one of them, a young policewoman, went up the stairs to find Jenna only to discover that she wouldn't come out from under the bed for anyone but me.

"They carried me up and I managed to coax Jenna out from under the bed. She was crying for our mum and completely inconsolable, but the policeman wouldn't let go of me and I couldn't go to her. We were both carried outside where half the street had gathered, along with the media. Apparently, the bastard who called the police didn't leave it there – after all, why just call the police when you can get paid for giving the media a juicy tip-off, too. That bloody picture of me being carried out made it onto every front page."

Mick hadn't known about that back then of course, but once he saw the image of him, bloody and crying, clinging desperately to the policeman as he fought to stay conscious and keep sight of his sister, he had been furious that his family's tragic end and his pain had been used to sell papers.

"I was still in hospital and Jenna had already been taken in by her foster parents, when the police came to tell me that they'd caught Darren Welles. The longer he was off his meds, the more erratic his behaviour got, and with all he was doing in the public eye he practically handed himself in. They pushed for a quick trial and the prosecution wanted me to take the witness stand – it was about three months after, and I'd barely got back on my feet, but there I was, in court, with one of my family's killers.

"I wasn't allowed to stay for any longer than my own evidence because everyone thought it would be too traumatic for me," Mick said bitterly. He had no doubt that it would indeed have been unbearable, but he'd still wanted to be there for it, to see the man face up to what he had done, to see him punished. "However, it was clear by their questioning that the defence team were trying to prove that he was _non compos mentis_ when he committed the crimes – tried to pass _him_ off as the victim.

"The other guy, you call them _'UnSubs'_ , right? Well, everything was laid at _his_ feet, especially since Welles hadn’t killed anyone else once they parted ways. But no matter how true that is, no matter how much he manipulated and influenced Welles, it was still _Welles_ that killed my father and my sister, and although the other UnSub was the one to actually kill my mother, I have no doubt that she wouldn't have survived the wounds inflicted by Welles.

"The courts didn't completely agree with Welles defence that he’d been manipulated into it and they eventually sentenced him to serve twenty-five years in Ashworth, it’s a high-security psychiatric hospital, where, at the end of his sentence he would be assessed and they would decide whether or not he was fit to return to society.

“They released him after only _twelve years_! He'd filed an appeal a few years in and stated that due to the so-called _'mitigating circumstances'_ of his crimes he couldn’t be held fully accountable, and apparently, as he was a model inmate who had turned his life around and come to grips with his illness, he was ready to return to the world, whole and healthy. With all the budget cuts and the limited space available at those places, they let him go, and then he killed someone else two years after his release, a thirty-year-old mother of two.

"They never caught the other guy, no fingerprints, no one even vaguely resembling his description – he got away with it and Welles just about did. The police couldn’t catch the other UnSub, and all those times they let me down when I was getting the hell beaten out of me in foster care, during my time on the streets, they never helped. Then Welles only served twelve years for killing my family, Coop. After that, I just about gave up all belief in the police and the justice system, and honestly, the idea of going to work for them now, when I know they can fail so monumentally…it’s almost unbearable," Mick confessed quietly.

"I'm sorry, Mick – I'm sorry for what happened to you, I'm sorry you had to go through that, and I'm sorry that you feel so let down by the justice system." Sam said earnestly, trying to keep any and all sentiments of pity out of voice as he knew Mick would hate it – he was quite sure he'd failed miserably.

Despite the many years they'd known each other, Sam still wasn't much used to comforting Mick, having discovered almost from the off that the younger man didn't quite seem to know how to react to kind words and a gentle hand. Cooper noticed that Mick coped much better with a few quiet but direct words, meant to refocus him, not comfort him. The sniper didn't much care for flowery sentiments and beating around the bush, and much preferred getting straight to the point with honesty over platitudes every time.

"I _do_ believe in the justice system," Sam said firmly. "I know it is anything but perfect, I know it has faults and that it has failed too many people too many times, but I also know that it is better to have it than not at all and that it is something worth striving for, worth _fighting_ for. I believe whole-heartedly in _'innocent until proven guilty'_ and I believe that everyone has the right to a defence. I also believe that there are certain criminals who should never again see the light of day – Welles should have been locked up until the Day of Judgement.

"The thing I believe _most_ about the justice system is that it is only as good as the people who uphold it. Every person I want on my team is flawed and somewhat damaged by the world, myself included, as you well know. We've all lost people, been betrayed and disappointed by those we _should_ have been able to count on and we all know, more than most, just how unfair, unbalanced and dark a place the world can really be. Yet, despite all of that, each and every one of us are good people – at our very cores, we're _good_. I believe that! We've seen the darkness and yet we fight against it, we do everything we can to spare those around us from suffering the same pain _we_ felt.

"This job I'm asking you to do, the world I'm asking you to step into…it can seem dark and desperate, hopeless and endless. In the BAU you will all face the most depraved, the most sadistic, _the_ most destructive people imaginable – the very Devil in human form. But each and every one of you has shown that you have the ability to survive it and the will to fight against it – most importantly, you've shown that you have the strength to endure it. Not everyone can say that about this job.

"You suffered an _unimaginable_ childhood tragedy and you've suffered through more pain since then, and as terrible as it sounds for me to say this out loud, as trite as it seems, it has made you perfect for this job. Because you've looked into the heart of darkness, and you understand exactly what that means, you know exactly what it costs and you _still_ do everything you can to keep it at bay. What's more, the understanding and the instincts that you've acquired out of necessity, the compassion you've managed to retain, the experiences you've endured on _both_ sides of the legal spectrum, make you uniquely capable for this job.

"Do you know how many people I've encountered in my time at the BAU who have suffered through one childhood trauma or another? Too many to count and all too often, _they_ are the perpetrators, using their terrible experiences as reason enough to inflict that kind of pain and torment on someone else. You survived through something horrific, and it changed you, yes, it damaged you and shaped you, but it didn't twist you or break you into the very same Devil who hurt you in the first place."

"Ok, a little too heavy on the religious undertones, for my liking, but I think get your point," Mick interrupted quietly, his voice still thick with emotion from retelling his sorry past.

"What happened to you, Mick, to your family," Sam started compassionately. "It was _not_ your fault - not because you were unable to save them, not because you survived, not even because one of the UnSubs seemed drawn to you. Do you remember what you told me about Colby Holme all those years ago? That it wasn't my fault? That the fault lay entirely with the _'sick son of a bitch'_ who killed him? Did you believe that or were you just trying to make me feel better?"

"Of course that wasn't your fault," Mick replied earnestly.

"So what the hell makes you think that what Welles and the other UnSub did to your family is yours?" Sam asked almost desperately, as he tried to get through to his friend.

"You said it yourself – what if all of that happened just because that other guy wanted me?" Mick said brokenly. "What if he killed my family to get to me?" It was the one question that had hounded him from childhood, one he had been too afraid to pose to Jenna or Danny – no one had known of that dark, haunting thought, until Sam Cooper and his bloody profiling skills came along.

"Even if he _did_ ," Sam stated passionately. "Even if that _were_ the case, and that's a big _'if'_ because the psychological profile of this guy would be _anything_ but straight forward, it _still_ would not be your fault – you can't shoulder the blame for someone else's psychoses or the actions they inspire. Would you blame a woman for being raped just because she was wearing a skirt?"

"Of course not," Mick replied angrily at the implication.

"Of course not," Sam agreed. "Because you would blame the one who raped her, the one who set morality aside and acted out his perverted fantasy simply because he wanted to, because he could, because he wanted that level of power over another person.”

“But he didn’t rape me,” Mick argued.

“No, but he did force you to play into his fantasy, it doesn’t matter that it wasn’t sexual. You were a _child_ , Mick, a helpless child with no real understanding of the darker side of the human mind – there was nothing you could have _done_ , nothing you could have _said_ to change the results of what happened that day. There are some things that are simply beyond our control."

Mick nodded, though truth be told, he wasn't convinced. Perhaps as a child he might not have _known_ the right thing to say or do to stave off the attack, but that didn't mean that there _wasn't_ something, some way to do that very thing.

"I'm not saying this job is your destiny or anything so clichéd as that, but I _do_ think, unreservedly, that with your experiences both in the Army and before it, with your intelligence and your instincts, your compassion and your dedication, your very _nature_ , you could do a hell of a lot of good in the BAU."

"Stop it from happening to another family, you mean?" Mick asked somewhat sarcastically, waiting for the platitudes that normally came with such assertions.

"I can't promise you that," Sam shook his head, his voice all honest sincerity and compassionate understanding. "The very nature of the job means that we usually only get the call _after_ someone's been hurt. All I _can_ promise you is that we can try to stop it from happening _again_ , and that even though we can't manage that on every occasion, we can at least hunt the sons of bitches down and help lock them away."

Mick nodded, feeling a little abashed at the harsh tones he'd directed towards his friend. His nerves were still jittery from recalling what had happened to his family, but it was no excuse – he knew Sam better than that, _knew_ that the older man was rarely so trite as to use tired old clichés in an effort to appease him. Sam had always been honest with him, sometimes brutally so, and he had given Mick no reason to suspect that that would change any time soon.

"Sorry, I guess I'm still a little…off," Mick admitted, settling on a vague word to describe his mood as he had zero capability in trying to explain his current emotional see-sawing.

"It's ok, I get it," Sam said gently. And he did – he'd interviewed entirely too many victims and seen entirely too many similar reactions for Mick's somewhat belligerent tone to either surprise or upset him, and whether Mick wanted to admit it or not, he _was_ a victim. "Thank _you_ for trusting me enough to tell me what happened."

"I should have told you sooner," Mick shrugged, trying to feign some indifference and clenching his fists in an effort to hide the fact that they were still trembling.

"You should have told me when you were ready, not because you felt pressured into it," Sam excused his friend remorsefully, as he felt he had done just that.

"Well, now you know everything," Mick managed a small smile.

"Oh, I doubt I'll ever know everything where you're concerned," Sam replied knowingly. "But that doesn't mean I'm not going to give it a try."

"You'll have me in a straightjacket by the end of the month," Mick joked, a short laugh erupting through his turbulent emotions.

"If the female population of Swansea are very lucky..." Sam agreed wickedly, feeling a deep sense of relief as he saw his young friend laugh more readily and easily, genuinely.

"I think you overestimate my powers of persuasion, mate," Mick shook his head, still chuckling away.

"Not at all," Sam said with a degree of sincerity that warmed the Welshman's heart. "I know I've asked a lot of you Mick, and I'm not going to demand an answer now, especially since I'm intrigued by Pryce's offer of looking into a few possibilities to make this work _both_ ways, but I will _never_ change my mind about wanting you on this team…on _any_ team of mine."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence, I guess," Mick smiled somewhat shyly. He knew that he'd overreacted to Sam's offer, but he still didn't know what his answer was, so he was glad beyond words that his friend wasn't pushing for an immediate answer.

"Right, I imagine you're feeling pretty sorry for yourself with that hangover you're nursing," Sam said, tactfully ignoring the real reasons he would be feeling so lousy. "So, go and get yourself settled on the couch and I'll cook us up an English breakfast."

"An English Breakfast…cooked by an American…for a Welshman? I'm sure we're breaking some sort of cardinal rule, there," Mick pointed out wryly.

"Well tough luck, I feel like some bacon and eggs, at the very least."

"Coffee?" Mick asked, full on puppy-dog eyes.

"You have a hangover, juice would be better…water better still," Sam replied through narrowed eyes.

"Coffee cures _all_ ills," Mick argued with fake solemnity.

"You're hopeless," Sam shook his head as he headed towards the fridge.

"You know that and yet you _still_ want me on your team, so what does that say about _you_?" Mick asked cheekily.

"I dread to think," Sam replied wryly. "Now shut up and find something to watch so I can cook in peace."

" _Burn_ in peace, more like it," Mick muttered sotto voce, recalling the last time he'd allowed Sam in his kitchen – to be fair, they had both, along with Danny and Jenna, been really quite drunk, but the Welshman could still recollect the smell of burnt fish that had permeated the air of his apartment for days afterwards.

"I still say that was _your_ fault for introducing me to Pimms and not telling me what was in it – fruit cocktail my ass," Sam laughed, as he remembered the disastrous attempt at drunken cooking.

"It _is_ a fruit cocktail," Mick insisted.

"With _gin_ ," Sam pointed out. "And then you added _extra_ gin!"

"Excuses, excuses old man," Mick shook his head. "Now concentrate – I'd hate for you to ruin my only other saucepan."

Sam laughed again, quieter this time as he watched his friend relax and leave his troubles behind him once again as he settled in to flick through crappy late morning television. Mick was a resilient man and even if he didn't end up joining the Red Cell team, Sam felt a degree of comfort in knowing that there were no more big secrets between them, that they were forever bound to each other and their friendship through their shared traumas and understanding – if nothing else, he had that to hold onto.

* * *

** Ashworth ** **_– it is a high-security psychiatric hospital in Merseyside (Liverpool area) that caters to those (especially criminals) with dangerous or violent personality disorders. I will have most likely drastically under-done the sentence for Welles, but I wanted to give Mick a reason to be dispirited by it all. Also, there was a time a few years ago when many violent offenders had been released from psychiatric facilities after reasonably short sentences and then went on to harm and in some cases, kill, so the system here in the UK is anything but perfect._ **

** English Breakfast ** **_– I've never understood_ ** **why _this is_ 'English' _but apparently it is. It tends to be a big cooked breakfast that includes bacon, sausages and eggs, and usually baked beans, hash browns/fried bread, mushrooms and tomatoes…the full monty (a phrase which doesn't have anything to do with stripping, but just means '_ everything') _. Basically a heart-attack on a plate but it can go a long way towards curing the worst of hangovers! There are variants depending on where you live, but this tends to be the most popular mix._**

** Pimms ** **_– a lovely and refreshing summer alcoholic drink that we Brits tend to drink by the gallon the moment to sun comes out. It's a gin-based drink with a blend of herbs and spices and is usually mixed with lemonade. It can be lethal in that it doesn't taste like alcohol (although I tend to make mine pretty strong, so it can do!) and you can quickly lose track of just how much you've had to drink. If you haven't had it (and can get it where you live) you_ ** **MUST _try it!_**

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_As to Mick's traumatic past, I wanted to offer an explanation that related to comments he made to Beth episode 1x06 ('Devotion') that seemed a little callous in regards to the mentally ill UnSub, especially considering his job at the BAU and previous more compassionate behaviour:_ **
> 
> **Beth: I think we're dealing with a schizophrenic.  
>  Mick: Oh, great, his reasons are subverted by his own crazy internal agenda.  
>  Beth: It's not that simple. There's a constellation of symptoms, in this case – fractured speech, paranoia, persecutory delusions. There's not one thing that's pathognomonic to this.  
>  Mick: And…?  
>  Beth: And they're very treatable with the right medications.  
>  Mick: [laughs derisively]  
>  Beth: You don't agree?  
>  Mick: It doesn't matter what I think, all I care about is preventing him from killing again.  
>  Beth: So the only options for you…?  
>  Mick: We either catch him or kill him [shrugs dismissively]  
> **
> 
> **_And later…  
> _**
> 
> **Beth: Can you imagine the overwhelming anguish and loneliness – they only had each other and then it's gone.  
>  Mick: [dismissively] Still, it doesn't excuse what he did.**


	17. Chapter 17

He'd already let the taxi go before he questioned whether or not he was at the right address – the FBI's elite Red Cell…in a gym? In all the times they’d talked about it, Sam had never mentioned a gym. He knew that what Coop and the Director had put together was unorthodox, to say the least, but Mick had still expected something resembling an office.

From the outside the gym looked old and tired, as though it was one with a few dedicated clients who had been going to it for years but hadn't pulled in anyone new for at least a decade. It seemed somewhat incongruous with its more vibrant surroundings – the streets were busy and the pavements well worn down by the volume of foot traffic.

Mick saw the vehicle parked outside the iron gates that led into the gym complex and couldn't hold in a laugh – it seemed as though Coop's mid-life crisis dream of getting a new bike had been realised. He pushed through the gates and cautiously made his way through the gloomy corridor, looking for the correct entrance.

He'd been in the States for almost a week now, but he had yet to see the Red Cell's offices – he'd been in and out of Quantico to clear up issues over his contract and he'd even spent a couple of days in classes at the Academy in an effort to get to grips with US law and what enforcing it would entail. Finally, when a gap in the bureaucratic demands of the job eased, Mick had taken it upon himself to see his new base of operations and meet his new team.

He wasn't sure if Coop had been deliberately keeping them apart, worried about the reactions on everyone's side and eager for Mick to be fully committed before anything could change his mind, or if the opportunity simply hadn't arisen. Whatever the reason, he was at the gym and there was no going back – one way or another, he was going to meet his new teammates.

Pushing through the door, he entered the main body of the gym and, with a trained military eye immediately taking in possible exits before looking at the smaller details.

It was a large, open space, with tall windows along one side with views out onto the street and small windows on the other shielding what Mick assumed was the office area. There were punching bags and a few weights dotted around the outside and the whole area was lit by huge, industrial scale light fixtures that seemed focused on a large mat in the centre, where a couple of men were fighting each other, aikido by the look of it, and they certainly weren't going easy on each other. He briefly wondered if either one of them was one of his new teammates before a voice interrupted his thoughts.

"Can I help you?" came a soft southern accented voice from the side.

Mick turned and looked at the man – he was a medium height and build, dark brows covered by a baseball cap pulled low over his forehead. With jeans and a chequered shirt over a scruffy t-shirt, the whole look was very casual, but not one that suggested someone who was serious about sweating away at a punch-bag or on the mat.

"Simms?" he guessed.

"Yeah," the man replied, suddenly alert and wary, aware of just how many people were unhappy that he had been chosen for an elite unit over more senior, more qualified and, in his opinion, certainly more deserving men and women.

"Mick Rawson," the Welshman offered, holding out a hand in greeting. "I had a couple of spare hours in between all that bloody paperwork and thought it was about time I introduced myself."

"Jonathan Simms – pleasure to meet you," Simms answered, shaking the other man's hand. The Welshman's accent was obvious when he said more than a single word, and Simms almost kicked himself for his stiff reaction, wondering what the newest profiler would read into him by his defensive body-language.

"Worried I didn't have the right place, at first," Mick offered with a wry grin and a slight gesture to the open gym room.

"Yeah," Simms agreed. "Not what I was expecting either, but that seems to come part and parcel with Cooper."

"You're not wrong there, mate," Mick laughed. "Coop lives to stir things up."

"Not always," came a suspicious tone from behind him.

Mick turned around and came face to face with a beautiful but decidedly hostile looking young woman that had to be Gina La Salle. Her hair was tied back in a neat pony-tail and her tight-fitting clothes highlighted her tall, slim figure. Her knee-high boots were old and well worn, age having softened the black leather, but the rest of her clothes seemed new and, while plain, no doubt expensive.

"Mick Rawson," he once again offered his hand and noticed the critical gaze directed his way before La Salle reluctantly offered her own.

Simms tried not to smile at Gina's defensive manner – she was protective of those she counted friends and it had been clear from the off that Sam Cooper was more than just a friend to her. Cooper had certainly proven himself to be more than a simple friend to _him_ – the man had got him released from prison with the promise of a second-chance at life, one he had not failed to deliver.

The day Sam Cooper had come to San Quentin and offered him a shot at redemption had been life-changing and was forever imprinted on his mind…

" _Agent Cooper?" Simms asked incredulously, as he stepped into the private visitors' room of San Quentin. It had been years…a_ lifetime _ago that he had last seen the man, but his imposing figure and stern countenance were hard to forget._

" _Hello," Sam greeted the man hesitantly as he tried to think on what to call him – they weren't close enough to be on a first name basis but_ 'Detective' _seemed a bit crass given his history with the police and the rather calamitous end to his career, equally, addressing him simply as_ 'Mr Simms' _could be seen as rubbing salt in the wound._

" _How can I help you, Agent?" Simms asked, his Southern upbringing coming to the forefront as he minded his manners and sat quietly opposite the man. He was grateful that the agent had had the forethought to use a private room rather than the main visitors' room – he was still known as an ex-cop inside, but he had finally managed a reputation that had helped him to survive and it was one he was eager not to ruin with the knowledge of him meeting up with the FBI._

" _Actually, I'm hoping_ I _might be able to help_ you _," Cooper replied, a small enigmatic smile adorning his face._

" _What do you mean?" Simms inquired curiously. It had been a long,_ long _time since anyone on the outside had sought to do anything for him, especially someone in law enforcement._

" _We'll get to that," Sam said. "First, I was thinking we should probably get to know each other a little better."_

" _Seriously?" Simms asked incredulously. "I haven't seen or heard from you for_ years _, and now all of a sudden you show up here, won't tell me why and you want my life story?"_

" _I_ will _explain," Sam promised. "But you need to understand that the reason I'm here is somewhat…delicate and it has a long story behind it. As far as you're concerned, the short version is that I have a job offer for you, but that job offer requires me to place a great deal of trust in you and encourage my team and other agents, more senior men and women than myself who are currently unconvinced, to do the same – for that to work, I need to assure myself that my instincts about you are correct…that you are indeed the man I believe you to be. I simply want to know more about you, and not just about why you ended up in here."_

" _I would have thought_ that _was all that matters," Simms replied somewhat bitterly_

" _Not to me," Sam assured the other man. "Look, Simms, I'm not going to pretend that I don't know what happened to get you in here and I'm not even going to pretend that you're wholly innocent – at the end of the day, intentional or not, a man lost his life in your custody._

" _However, I don't, for one moment, believe that you ever intended to kill the man, I don't acknowledge the idea that you deserved prison time for an accident, and I sure as hell don't think you should suffer for the rest of your life. I am_ not _your enemy here, Simms!"_

" _Prophet," Simms interjected quietly._

" _Excuse me?" Sam asked, confused._

" _Everyone calls me_ 'Prophet' _in here," Simms shrugged._

" _And you're ok with me calling you that?" Sam wondered aloud, aware that a prison nickname was not everyone's first choice._

" _Its fine," the other man laughed, rightly guessing the man's concerns. "To be honest, the day I got this name was one of the best days I had in here."_

" _Why is that?" Sam inquired, hoping to prompt the reluctant man into talking._

" _I spent a lot of time in the SHU when I first got to prison, with the warden figuring it was safer for everyone if the cop wasn't in Gen. Pop. with everyone looking to spill his blood. I get why he did it, I even appreciated it on some level, but I could spend up to twenty-three hours alone in that cell._

" _It was done to protect me, and to keep the prison running smoothly too, I guess, but it felt more like a punishment than anything else – a concrete bed, no window and only an hour of exercise every day._ That _was laughable – one hour to walk round and around a tiny concrete yard with a bunch of guards looking on, itching for an excuse to show you just what they thought of_ 'dirty' _cops._

" _I_ wasn't _actually in there for punishment, at least that's what they told me, so I was allowed books," Prophet said with a small smile – those books had been his saving grace. "Twenty-three hours of being stuck in a tiny cell for about four years and you'll read just about anything you can get your hands on – romance novels, manuals, history books. I read a lot of philosophy, a lot of religious literature – learnt all about Pragmatism and Existentialism, the Bible, the Qur'an, Zen Buddhism, Karma and Reincarnation._

" _The SHU was getting crowded and the new warden decided on shuffling things about a bit – I wasn't deemed much of a risk, and that coupled with my old job saw me put in the Minimum-Security Wing, with the less violent offenders and a cellmate. He was a kid, really, in for grand theft – he left me alone for the most part, in those first few months, anyway."_

_José García Marín was Cuban by birth, but he and his parents had fled the country in 1994, desperate to escape the poverty that had seized the island after the fall of the Soviet Union. None of them had arrived speaking a word of English and they quickly discovered the price of being transported over was not as simple as they had been led to believe._

_The initial payment they'd made was deemed to be insufficient, and they were given the chance to work it off – stuck with other illegal immigrants they had been tasked with all manner of employment, both licit and illicit, with no one to turn to for fear of retribution or of being deported._

_Surrounded by a largely Spanish speaking community, suspicious of many outsiders for fear of being reported, English had not come quickly to José. Eventually, school had given him a rudimental understanding of the spoken language, but severe dyslexia and a fear of being ridiculed had hindered any great advances in his reading and writing._

_Deprivation on all levels instilled in him a deep need to provide for his poverty-stricken family – often playing truant and further ignoring his education, he found whatever work he could find wherever he could find it, ignoring the legality of what that work entailed. Eventually, he was arrested and sentenced to serve a prison term for grand theft – that he found a disgraced former cop in his cell simply meant that José was convinced the Universe was laughing at him._

_Prophet felt a degree of empathy with the young man – he had been born in Philadelphia but moved to Georgia shortly after his fifth birthday and his parents' divorce. His mother had worked three different jobs, but they were all low-level, menial jobs, shift-work that earned her next to nothing once rent, tax and bills had been paid._

_They'd never had health insurance when he was growing up, and there had never been enough food in the cupboards. He hadn't minded getting clothes and furniture from the charity shops, and the odd hand-out from the church-run food banks, as they'd been living in a poor district in Atlanta where many people were in the same boat and they'd needed all the help they could get on the bad days, but he'd always quietly resented the lack of what had been deemed luxury items, such as books._

_Like José, he, too, had often had to make the choice between school and work, although in his case it hadn't been quite as detrimental to his education as at least he already spoke the language. Nevertheless, while his friends had been hanging out together on street corners and in the park, he'd been getting what work he could, where he could find it – it had thankfully always been legal, but rarely well paid. Still, it had helped to make ends meet._

_Reaching eighteen and thinking that his High School Diploma was all he was going to be able to achieve in life, he had been shocked to learn that they had only struggled as much as they had financially because his mother had been putting away a little of every pay-check when she could, adding to a trust fund in his name so that he could go to college. It was not enough to afford to go to university, but it was enough to pay for an education at the local community college, where he could go while living at home, reducing costs still further._

_He'd had more options open to him than José, but he knew more than most what it was to fight for everything you own, even your education, and they had somewhat bonded over that._

" _He got to trust me a little, and eventually he asked me to help him with his reading and writing, help him get his GED. There is a lot of sitting around in prison and I had nothing better to do with my time, so although I wasn't much of a teacher, I did what I could to help him – with special dispensation for his dyslexia, he got his GED after a year of studying for it. During that time, a few of the older inmates came to me for help with_ their _GEDs and it earned me a solid enough reputation to get round the fact that I was once a cop._

" _Anyway, I was also known as something of a pacifier and after about six months in Gen. Pop., I managed to stop a pretty severe situation from escalating. Nelson, a friend in here, said I have a knack for spotting trouble, even before things kick off, and that, along with my rather liberal lessons concerning philosophy," Simms chuckled, "Earned me my nickname,_ 'Prophet' _and with that moniker, I more or less secured a place in here._

" _I was angry as hell when I first got sentenced and bored out of my mind in the SHU, and getting to Gen. Pop., even with the dangers that brought, seemed like an end to the hell of solitary, only to be shunned so violently that I may as well have still been alone. I knew I could still serve a further four and a half years, so it was all about survival, and survival in prison means finding a place that isn't on everyone's hit list – teaching not only gave me that, but it brought me a reprieve and even a few friends._

" _That, coupled with why I'm in here to begin with helped keep me alive for the most part – vigilante justice isn't such an alien concept behind bars, and even though I never intended to kill the guy, the fact that he was a paedophile means there are a few inmates who…respect me somewhat," Prophet confessed, struggling to find the right words._

" _When I first got out of the SHU and into Gen. Pop. in Minimum-Security, I wasn't always…_ good _," Prophet admitted. "There are things I did at the start to try and prove that I wasn't someone they should mess with, someone they should challenge – like I said, it was_ all _about survival. Teaching José and the others, that calmed me down, brought me back and gave me a purpose – I swore to myself that when I got out, I was going to make up for it all, atone for_ all _my sins._

" _It hasn't always been smooth sailing and I've been on the wrong end of trips to the infirmary more than I would have liked, but I'm making it through ok, certainly better than I would have done in Maximum-Security."_

" _Yes, I can imagine," Sam agreed gravely – just_ thinking _about the consequences of Simms being placed in Maximum-Security elicited shivers down his spine._

" _You seriously want to give_ me _a job?" Prophet asked disbelievingly._

" _I do," Sam stated firmly. "And nothing you have told me so far…nothing I already know has been enough to put me off the idea."_

_Simms nodded, curious as to why the profiler seemed intent on hiring_ him _of all people, but still too wary to go looking for details…to find hope._

" _You_ do _know I'm still in prison, right?" he asked, gesturing to the room, complete with bars and guards, around them. "And that even when I_ do _leave, it will be with a criminal record."_

" _I do," Sam smiled. "The criminal record shouldn't be an issue, I assure you. I also know that you're up for parole, and having read your records I see no reason why you won't get it."_

" _Thanks," Simms winced. Parole…another period of being monitored and his life being curtailed by all that had happened before._

" _But I don't think that is good enough," Sam shook his head. "With your permission, I would like to introduce you to Miguel Alvarez – he's a lawyer out of DC who specialises in miscarriages of justice, and your case…_ that _was a_ grave _miscarriage of justice. He's already looked over the details and he thinks you have a case, and few men know what they're talking about with regards to the law better than Miguel. Honestly, I think we can not only get you released from prison, but I very much believe that you could get a pardon."_

" _A pardon?" Prophet couldn't believe what he was hearing. A pardon?_ Parole _wasn't even a guarantee, and here Cooper was talking about a_ pardon _?_

" _The judge was unduly harsh in your case. The injuries resulted in death, that is true, but given the mitigating circumstances of your case, I find it hard to believe that any judge in their right mind would have been so severe had they not been so concerned with their own public image – Judge Albright was reacting to the media circus going on outside his courtroom, when his only concern should have been what was going on_ inside _._

" _I can't make you any guarantees, of course," Sam warned the shell-shocked man. "But I very much believe we have a case here, and I hope you will try to work with Alvarez. However, there is also the down side to consider – there is always a chance that you will be met by an even more draconian judge who will think your earlier sentence is insufficient, and you might not only serve the full term of your original sentence, but also run the risk of adding to it._

" _We can work on the parole first and get you out – that would make further sentencing a legal nightmare for the courts, but it is no guarantee. This is a lot to take in, I know, and it is entirely in your hands," Sam said gently, so as not to startle the stunned man any further._

" _Why?" Simms finally managed._

" _Maybe because you've earned it, maybe because I think it is the right thing to do, but mainly because you should never have been in here in the first place. I know what it is to lose all hope in the very people you're supposed to be able to rely upon," Sam explained, thinking about the military bigwigs who distanced themselves from the very actions they were condoning in the Middle East and not caring two hoots about the personal consequences._

" _I can't promise you that that will never happen again, because honestly, I've lost any semblance of complete faith in the Brass, too. In this job I'm offering you, you will be in a high-pressure work environment, meeting the very worst of society, quite literally working through blood and tears, and at the end of the day, it is_ your _actions in the case reports that the Brass are going to be concerned with. As far as the UnSubs go, as long as they're caught, in a legal and timely manner, the Brass doesn't much care, but for_ us _? For_ us _, in_ our _job, in a somewhat experimental unit, it is all a little more complicated and we will_ all _be carefully scrutinised by not just the Director and the higher ups who answer to him, but to the people_ he _answers to, as well – given your past, that will likely be doubly so for you."_

_Simms nodded, unsure of what to say to such an assertion – it was clear that even if he managed a full pardon, he would not escape his past so easily._

" _This will not be an easy job – it will leave an indelible mark on your soul that you will carry with you until the end of days, and sometimes you will be required to walk through hell on earth to accomplish your job, questioning the very basis of humanity as you go. However, I believe you will excel at it and you will_ not _be alone._

" _If you take this job, Prophet, you will have a team with you every step of the way – they are in no way conventional and I can assure you, you're not even going to be the hardest person to acquire, and certainly not the most damaged. You will be given a second chance to do a job you love, that you excel at, and you will make a bigger difference than you could_ ever _have hoped to achieve in Vice."_

_Simms merely nodded again. It was a lot to take in and seemed too fantastical to be real – despite the grave warnings Cooper had given him about the job, he found himself hoping against hope that he could have a future outside the concrete walls and barbed wire fences of San Quentin._

" _I suppose now is the time to ask about what, exactly, this job entails," he pointed out wryly._

And that, as they say, was that. After Coop had explained to him exactly what the Red Cell was being created for, what their purpose would be, he had agreed to meet with Alvarez to get the ball rolling on his application for a full pardon, and he'd agreed to allow Cooper to speak on his behalf at his parole hearing. While parole was certainly possible, he'd never really held out much hope for a pardon and had therefore refrained from committing himself to Cooper's new team until he was outside in the free world and able to look at the situation in as unbiased a position as possible.

Of course, once he'd got the pardon, it was very hard to feel anything other than an immense sense of gratitude for Cooper and the man's faith in him – that gratitude fed into a sense of obligation and loyalty to the man, and in the end, saying _'yes'_ had been the only possible outcome.

Over the period between their first meeting and the pardon being granted, Prophet had, of course, asked about the other members of the team. He knew that it was a new idea and that the team, as Cooper hoped it _would_ be, had not even been formed yet, and that its rather unorthodox list of members was being looked down upon by everyone in DC, even the Director – it was only the man's staunch faith in Sam Cooper that had the venture moving forward.

He'd been interested to meet Gina La Salle. On paper, he and La Salle were direct opposites – he was trained and long since jaded by the job, whereas Gina was new and untried, too early into her career to be truly influenced by it yet. He was from a neighbourhood where the greatest hope most people had was to avoid the gang scene in Atlanta and stay out of trouble – Simms thought he had achieved that when he graduated from the Academy with a relatively trouble-free past, only for the rug to have pulled out from under him. From everything he had understood before actually meeting the woman and discovering the truth, he believed that La Salle came from the traditional nuclear family in a wealthy DC suburb, free from the many issues that had plagued his own childhood.

With what Simms had deemed her lack of experience, both on the job _and_ off it, he was impatient to understand what it was about La Salle that saw her being picked right out of the Academy for the Red Cell, that had attracted Cooper's attention and had him so convinced that a rookie was right for the team. Given his own job offer, he felt that he was more able than most to question the sanity of Cooper's hand-picked group, because surely _nothing_ was crazier than choosing an ex-cop with a murder rap to his belt.

So he was intrigued to see what it was that had drawn Cooper to the untested young woman, if only to discern some reason that explained why _he_ had been chosen.

Beth Griffith was an understandable addition in that she was an actual FBI agent for one, and _that_ was certainly a rarity amongst Cooper's other hires. He understood from the team leader that she was skilled in geo-profiling, too, which was one step up from the rest of them as far as Prophet could tell. Her work with the counter-terrorism taskforce indicated that even if she had been unpopular with her previous Section Chiefs, she was still valued for her abilities.

Mick Rawson, however, was the teammate he was most intrigued by. Prophet knew from Sam that acquiring the soldier had been the hardest task for the new Red Cell team leader, and considering Simms had still been inside San Quentin when Cooper had first started thinking about the team _that_ was saying something!

Still in the military, and a British national to boot, it had been no small feat to get Rawson's hire approved by the higher ups – he was the only one of them with absolutely no training in law enforcement whatsoever and no education to speak of. He knew from Cooper that the younger man had been a soldier, but beyond that the Senior Agent had been remarkably reluctant to share any details.

Once Prophet had been granted parole and work on his pardon had been well under way, Cooper had introduced him to both La Salle and Griffith, eager to get the Red Cell venture started. Rawson had still been overseas and Cooper hadn't said much about when or even _if_ he would be joining them. So, while the last member of the team was the other side of the world, the others had slowly gotten to know each other somewhat.

Beth Griffith had still been on assignment to the Counter-Terrorism Taskforce, but she had managed to make it out to the gym to meet them on a few occasions, even going to the bar one evening.

Simms hadn't really known what to make of the woman – she had been blunt where La Salle had been tactful and cautious, and Beth's scathing criticism of anything and everything that vexed her was freely shared with the rest of the group. He had been sure that she _must_ have something to say about his own situation, but she remained quiet there and Simms had begun to wonder if Cooper had warned her about sharing her thoughts on that particular topic.

As he got to know her, he knew better – there was not a soul in the world that could gag Beth Griffith and keep her from speaking her mind should the mood take her, and it frequently did. She had strong opinions about all sorts of things but she seemed to be fine with her future team – Prophet wasn't sure if that was down to her own relief at no longer being the problem child of a unit or if she was simply more open-minded than she first appeared to be.

Their meetings had been brief but her obvious skills as well as her devotion to the job and her out-of-the-box thinking made her an interesting addition to an already unique team, and Simms found himself looking forward to working with the no-nonsense woman.

Prophet had attended a few classes at the Academy with Gina La Salle, and had been grateful for her restraint – not once during their entire time in classes together had she ever even _hinted_ at holding him in contempt for his time spent behind bars, and the same could certainly _not_ be said about the rest of their classmates, who had listened to the increasingly exaggerated rumours about his past with glee and seemed to enjoy taking every opportunity to belittle him and inform him _just_ how big a mistake Cooper had made in hiring him.

Instead of standing by and trying to refrain from upsetting former classmates from her time in the Academy, Gina had defended the former convict and categorically stated exactly what she thought of those trying to intimidate Simms – using her natural talents at reading a person to go for the jugular with each and every jibe.

He knew that her vociferous defence of him had been, in part, a defence of herself and her own position on Cooper's team – he'd heard the talk around the water-cooler, the rumours that hinted at her hiring being due to nepotism rather than actual talent. However, after all of his interactions with Sam Cooper, Prophet found it very hard to believe that the man would be so cavalier as to choose the daughter of a friend for such an elite unit with a job he truly believed to be vital.

He'd often wondered what it had been about the young woman that had attracted Cooper's attention, but once he'd met her he hadn't been left to wonder for long. From the very start, her intelligence had been obvious, and her perception and natural instincts made her ideal for the profiling world. Her compassion and sheer determination had impressed him and he found that he could trust her judgement, despite her lack of experience on the job. In the end, Simms had been hard-pressed to find a reason why La Salle _shouldn't_ be on the team.

Still, Prophet had not expected the petite blonde girl from an upper-class background in Arlington to come to _his_ defence, to even _know_ the sorts of words Gina had expressed that day, but she had forever endeared herself to him for her actions and it had been the start of a quiet friendship based on mutual respect.

Cooper was still something of an enigma to them all. He was always there when they needed him, willing to listen and offer advice, ready to fight for them against their many, _many_ detractors. Still, none of them knew much about him on a personal level, what had brought him back to the FBI, or even where he lived. He still tried to maintain some degree of distance between them and Simms couldn't quite figure out how to get through to Cooper on his darker, more despondent days.

A blind man could tell just how much Cooper hated bureaucracy – hell, you only needed to look at their so-called office to know that he was as unconventional as the team he had put together. As the demands from Quantico had become more insistent, Gina and Prophet had been able to see the toll it was taking on the man – long nights that left behind crumpled clothes, heavy bags under the eyes and what could be rather snappish behaviour at times, and they had been powerless to do anything about it.

In the week that Rawson had been in country, they had all noticed a marked difference in the older man's countenance – he was smiling more often and his wry observations were voiced more freely. He also seemed less stressed with the endless demands from FBI bureaucracy, the phone calls from the Director wanting status reports on the team and the constant need for time estimates as to when they'd be ready for their first active case. Whatever he had done since arriving, Rawson had clearly managed to calm Cooper down, found a way to make the man de-stress.

It had predisposed Prophet to liking the Brit, but he had noticed that Gina seemed less so inclined. He knew that there was a personal link between her and Cooper, understood that La Salle looked up to the man as both mentor and father figure, and Simms was very much aware that underneath the confident mask she used to face the world, there was a very vulnerable young woman, full of doubts and insecurities – he could only hope that the friendship between their boss and Rawson was not going to adversely affect her.

Looking at the man in front of him, it was hard not to notice his relative youth and harder still to imagine the younger man in full military uniform, dodging bombs and bullets in the deserts of the Middle East. He had no idea of Rawson's rank or even what branch of the military he'd been in, but Simms had noticed the way his eyes had scanned the room upon entry, taking in every exit and any potential threats.

"So, Cooper told us you were military," Prophet said, trying to get conversation flowing and ease the tension that had appeared with Gina's evident wariness.

"Still am, technically," Mick shrugged.

"' _Technically'_?" Simms questioned curiously.

"My OC and Coop worked out a deal with the FBI," Mick explained. "I come here and work for the Red Cell, but at the same time I've been moved to a Reservist Regiment, so that if they ever need me, my skills are still on offer."

"Your skills being what, exactly?" Simms asked.

"I'm a sniper," Mick offered. "A pretty good one, too. The Army didn't want to let me go without a fight and, honestly, I wasn't entirely ready to leave the military – this seemed like too good a deal to pass up, really."

In reality, it was all a little more complicated than that – Mick was now no longer a member of the 22nd Regiment, but was now a part of the 21st, which, along with the 23rd, made up the SAS's Reservists. The demands on the reservists in the SAS, as with anywhere else, were not as substantial as those imposed upon the full-time soldiers, nor did they require quite the same level of commitment. With Mick, a special deal had been worked out that gave him a little more freedom than the usual Reservist.

Whilst he'd never had any concerns about his close friends in the Regiment, he _had_ been somewhat worried about how his special treatment would go over with the rest of the soldiers. He was surprised and relieved to find that for most of them, his reluctance to leave the Regiment entirely had curried him a lot of favour and many were simply happy that they hadn't lost him and his abilities altogether. He still had his detractors, of course, but on the whole the response to his employment with the FBI had been a positive one, with plenty of encouragement and more than the odd joke or two directed at his future employers.

Mick would still need to carry on with training for the SAS, both receiving it and giving it, and there was always the possibility that he would be required on a full tour of duty rather than just the odd mission around the world, although Pryce had done what he could to avoid that, but for the most part, Rawson would spend more time in the US with Coop and the Red Cell than back in the UK or away on missions and training.

Pryce had fought long and hard at Credenhill to secure such an outcome and Mick would forever be indebted to the man. The Senior Officer had managed to convince the higher-ups back in Herefordshire that unless they found some kind of compromise they would lose Mick and all of his abilities – Pryce had somehow persuaded them into thinking that the sniper was ready to leave, and that only his sense of duty had kept him from jumping at the offer.

Mick knew that he was valued as a sniper, knew that even amongst the elite ranks of the SAS his skill was unbeatable, and that ability was what had allowed for the compromise to occur in the first place, that and Pryce's unstinting faith in him.

As for the FBI, they had not only been offered a highly trained soldier, but one whose security clearance level remained intact and who had contacts across more than just the military world. With Coop and the Academy training him up where needed, he was going to the FBI with an unconventional set of skills compared to most members of the Bureau, but valuable ones, all the same. At the end of the day, they were prepared to accept the fact that they would not have complete control over Mick, happy enough with what they were gaining, instead.

Mick still wasn't sure what he would have chosen had he been forced to choose either the Army or Coop and he was eternally grateful that he hadn't been pushed to decide just yet.

"If you can't fully commit to this job," Gina asked, interrupting his thoughts with barely concealed hostility. "If it's not what you want, then why are you here?" She found herself annoyed at his vague, almost non-answers and at the other man's seeming lack of humility. She had been curious to meet the man that Cooper spoke of so highly and figure out what it was about the man that had her old friend so excited, but so far she remained unimpressed.

"It's not like that…" Mick began to argue, only to be interrupted again.

"Sounds like it to me," Gina shrugged.

"I'm sure it does," Mick replied quite honestly. He'd been worried about how the soldiers of the SAS would respond to his apparent special treatment, and he saw no reason for his new teammates to feel any less irritated by it all, especially as they didn't even know him or yet count him as a friend.

"Mick," Sam greeted from the stairs leading back to their office. He noticed the tension in the room and caught sight of Gina's unusually hostile stance, but he said nothing of it and gave no indication that he had registered any of it.

"Coop," Mick grinned back, the tension leaving his shoulders somewhat as he spied his friend. "I love what you've done with the place."

"Thanks," Sam laughed. "I hadn't expected to see you here."

"I had a gap in the paperwork," Mick answered the unasked question. "You never told me I'd have to work my way through a rainforest's worth of forms – I might have told you where to stick it, had I known."

"Now you know why I didn't tell you," Sam offered with a smirk and an unapologetic shrug.

"The FBI _do_ love their paperwork," Simms agreed. He'd had a lot of extra sheets to fill out due to the special nature of his hiring – apparently, giving an ex-con a gun and a badge required a lot of signatures.

"Clearly," Mick stated wryly. "I mean the Army could be bad enough – there are briefings, debriefings, after-action reports, acquisition forms and so many more besides, but the FBI makes the Army Brass look like they're not even _trying_."

Simms laughed, any worries he had about the younger man holding his past against him were being alleviated with the easy-going manner and camaraderie that seemed to come naturally to Rawson. He could see that Gina remained unconvinced, and he could only hope that time and a little knowledge about each other would help form a better relationship.

Sam, too, was a little worried about Gina's reaction to the Welshman, having never expected the usually even-tempered young woman to react so adversely. However, he had known Gina for many years, long before she had ever gone to the FBI Academy or even West Point, and she had always been wary of forming strong personal attachments to people having spent her early childhood moving around from military base to military base, never really staying in one place long enough to form long-term relationships of any kind. She had, unfortunately, carried that wariness over into her adult life, but Sam knew that given a little time and perspective, she would be fine.

"How about we go and get a drink?" Sam offered.

"I thought you'd never bloody ask," Mick replied with a grumble. "I _hate_ paperwork!" he explained to Prophet, who had simply raised one eyebrow at the younger man's tone.

"And you decided to join the FBI?" Prophet asked with a short, sharp laugh. "Bad move, kid."

Mick looked askance at Prophet, who couldn't understand why he was suddenly being faced with such an expression, but Sam had guessed – Prophet either hadn't realised or simply thought nothing of it, but he had called Mick, _'kid'_ and that had certainly _not_ gone unnoticed by the younger man.

"Well, maybe the first round should be on you, _Grandpa_ ," Mick joked, emphasising the _'Grandpa'_ to make his point known. "Cheer me up and all."

Simms's brow crinkled in confusion at the dig until he saw Sam mouth _'kid'_ with a questioning look and not a small degree of amusement, and realisation hit. He nodded at Coop, recognising that perhaps _'kid'_ was not the most tactful way to start of a new friendship, but really, could he help it if Coop had decided to surround them with agents who were at least fifteen years their junior!

"Alright," Simms agreed. "But only because you Brits like your beer so damn warm your taste has got to be questioned."

"We don't like warm beer," Mick argued as he followed Simms to the door. "It's just that _our_ beer is actually _good_ beer, so we don't need to freeze it to hide the taste, or lack thereof, like you Yanks do."

"Hey, our beer has taste!" Simms protested.

"Like hell!" Mick disagreed.

Sam listened as he followed and laughed at the easy banter that had sprung up between the two men, and he could only hope that with time, Gina would feel relaxed enough to join in. Mick was a natural flirt when it came to pretty women and Gina had never reacted well to such attention, so it would take a little time, but fingers crossed it would happen – with Mick and Simms already getting along, the future of the Red Cell was looking more secure, and strengthening with every traded jibe.

* * *

** SHU ** **_–_ ** ** Special Housing Unit ** **_– has a plethora of other names depending on country and state, but it is basically solitary, where inmates are sent either as punishment, or for their own protection._ ** ** SHU ** **_is apparently the term generally used in California, and therefore seemed most appropriate for San Quentin._ **

** Gen. Pop. ** **_–_ ** ** General Population ** **_refers, as you might imagine, to the largest part of the prison system that houses anyone and everyone not designated to solitary, psychiatric, death row…etc…_ **

** GED ** **_–_ ** ** General Education Development ** **_– offered as an alternative to the High School Diploma, with tests in five subjects: reading, writing, maths, science and social studies._ **

** Beer ** **_– I have a few American friends who all seem to be confounded by the idea of beer that isn't chilled – I'm not sure how it is in the US but here in the UK we have many different types that require different serving temperatures. The lagers tend to be chilled to hide the taste (they are usually pretty foul and very gassy) but a lot of the real ales (beer brewed in the traditional ways without extra gas etc.) are served at cellar temperature (12-14C,) whereas ales like stouts tend to be just below room temperature (17-18C). I think it is only mead and the like that are actually served warm._ **


	18. Chapter 18

"So how was Waters funeral?" Sam asked, getting straight to the point as he knew his young friend was still heavily affected by his last mission and wanted to offer some kind of support.

"It was alright," Mick shrugged.

They were sitting around one end of Cooper's cluttered table, finishing off the remains of a Thai take-out washed down with a light beer. He had initially been staying in a motel that offered rooms by the hour as well as by the night – it was not the nicest place to stay but it had been cheap, near the gym and next to a bus route that took him directly out towards Quantico. However, when he returned one night to find the whole area cordoned off and police investigating a murdered prostitute, Coop had insisted he stay with the older man until he found his own apartment.

So far, with his time divided between the Academy and going over old case files with Coop and the others, he'd not had much time to go looking for an apartment. The old case files were interesting and allowed them all to understand how they would be working cases when the time came – they'd even come up with a few new leads for some of the cold cases and, with Coop by their side, they had done a few interviews and analysed old crime scenes on location, trying to understand what it was they would be looking out for as profilers. Mick was grateful that Coop was very much a teacher who believed in learning through interaction, as he got more than enough paperwork at the Academy.

"' _Alright'_?" Sam prodded, trying to get his friend to open up and speak a little bit more

"It _was_ a funeral, Coop," Mick pointed out dryly as he took a long drag on his beer.

"I'm aware of that," the profiler replied patiently.

"It was a good turn out," Mick admitted. "He had a lot of friends in the Regiment, even if perhaps he didn't know just how many people liked him…but maybe that just makes it all a little more tragic."

"We all affect people in the world without truly realising the depth of it – it's what makes life and the people in it all the more important. Did he have any family turn up?" Sam wondered.

"No," Mick shook his head. "I think he only had his foster-father left, and the guy spent most of Rob's life in prison for one reason or another – there was no love lost between the two of them, not least because the son of bitch beat him and his foster-mother every chance he got before he was sent away. No…he was better off without his so-called family. I don't know if he had any _one_ close friend, but despite Rob only being in the Regiment a few months he was a popular guy and everyone who knew him and was in-country showed up – he got a pretty decent showing at the auction, too."

"Where'd the money go?" Sam asked curiously, wondering whether or not he had a special someone that was going to find a little extra support from all the money that had been raised at the Dead Man's Auction, a Regiment tradition that saw all funds raised either given to friends and family of the deceased, or back to the Regiment itself.

"He didn't have anyone, so it all went into Regimental funds," Mick explained. "It'll help pay for us other misfits to have a decent funeral when the time comes."

"I hope that time _never_ comes," Sam replied earnestly, never comfortable with the rather indifferent approach Mick sometimes seemed to take towards his own mortality.

"You never know what's going to happen out there," Mick shrugged. He had long since reconciled with the fact that any time he goes out on tour he may not return – every near-death experience still got his heart pumping with adrenaline as he did whatever he could to survive, but he knew that it didn't take much to irreparably damage a body.

"I can't imagine your funeral will be a quiet affair," Sam faked a smile, knowing that sometimes, no matter how uncomfortable a subject could be, it was better to talk about it, even in irreverent tones, than not at all. "All those women arguing over who was the one true love of your life."

"Well, I haven't found her yet…obviously I just need to keep on looking," Mick replied with a sly glint in his eyes.

"Obviously," Sam said sarcastically with a fond shake of his head. Mick really could be a conundrum at times – sometimes he came off as beyond confident and downright cocky as hell, but other times he let you see just how vulnerable he could be, how fragile his tender heart really was.

"Are you settling in alright?" Sam asked, getting to what he was really worried about. He wanted to know how the Welshman was coping with the move and the new team, and especially the somewhat unusually frosty reception from Gina.

"Of course," Mick agreed. "Your apartment is downright cosy."

"Thanks," the profiler replied with a grin – _he_ knew that _Mick_ knew what he had really been asking. Sam had heard the teasing dig in his friend's tone, but he took it in good spirits, glad to see a genuine smile on the Welshman's face.

His apartment could certainly _not_ be called _'cosy'_. The huge loft space was industrial in both scale and décor and while it usefully had the freight elevator so he could safely house his bike upstairs and off the street, there were some who found the chain-link fence as an indoor feature rather undesirable.

There was one room that could _almost_ merit the term _'cosy'_ , but he knew some would look at his living room and only see a mess. Almost every available wall-space in the main room was lined with shelves that were packed full of all sorts of items that he had collected over the years – there were books on every topic, although there was an unsurprisingly heavy focus on criminal psychology, and there were artefacts from all over the world, collected on his many travels, both before his time in the military and during.

However, even the shelves had a metal, industrial appearance and they were propped up between huge girders that constantly reminded people of the building's working history. The few remaining wall-spaces housed his artwork, scenes inspired by his caseload or even his time in the military – the dark undertones set a somewhat grim background theme.

Near the centre of the room was a large table, originally bought with dining there in mind, but it had quickly become cluttered with old case files and had a mess of journals that contained half-formed thoughts or fully-fledged ideas from some of his more despondent days that he could neither bring himself to read nor to throw away. There was one end that he tried to keep somewhat clear so he always had somewhere to eat without too much trouble.

The kitchen area was stark and strictly utilitarian, with a fridge and cupboards that were barely full as he rarely had the time to do a proper food shop. There was a coffee machine, obviously, and it was the one thing he and Mick seemed destined to argue over – Sam liked his coffee, too, but he actually liked coffee that _didn't_ dissolve the spoon, coffee that Mick constantly complained was even weaker than _'that dishwater they serve you in the mess tent'_. Oddly enough, most other _normal_ people thought that Sam's coffee was too strong and that Mick’s was barely two steps up from lethal!

On the kitchen counter, was a worn but well-loved chessboard with a half-played game that was currently going on between the two of them – Sam had enjoyed teaching Mick the game, and although he had little patience for the long game the sniper was becoming increasingly adept at it.

Sam's bedroom was one of the least-used rooms in the house and consisted only of a bed, an old chest that served as his bedside table, a chair and a wardrobe. The guest room where Mick was staying was even more sparsely decorated, with only a bed and an old chest of drawers.

"You know, what you need is a plant," Mick nodded sagely. "One of those huge green monstrosities that people insist on keeping indoors to brighten the place up."

"Yes," Sam agreed slowly. "It would fit right in with the rest of the decor."

Mick laughed at the man's wry tone. It was nice to see that Sam was trying to put down some roots, settling in and trying to make a home for himself after being relatively nomadic for almost a decade, but his home was certainly not homely – it _was_ , however, uniquely Sam Cooper in just about every way.

"So, you and Prophet seem to be getting on well," Sam pointed out, trying to get back to his original question.

"He's an easy man to get on with," Mick admitted. He'd been a little dubious about Simms at first, if only because of how much Coop had put his neck on the line for the man, but so far the former Vice Detective and ex-con seemed bound and determined to prove to all and sundry that the profiler's faith in him had not been misplaced.

"He gets quite a bit of flack at the Academy," Mick pointed out with an unhappy frown. "A lot of shit about his past, although where they get half their information I will never know – last week I heard a story about how Simms had taken over a prostitution ring from a Mexican Cartel while undercover and beat one of the girls to death. Anyone who thinks Prophet is the sort of man to prey on the weak and vulnerable in society _clearly_ doesn't know man _or_ the truth of his past."

"No," Sam agreed quietly. His concerns about Prophet's future at the BAU were not related to any doubts he had about the man's morality, rather that the former detective's compulsion to protect those who could not protect themselves was precisely what had already cost him over six years of his life in prison.

"La Salle seems quite determined to act as his white knight, though, coming to his defence with a few well-aimed words – she's got a mouth on her, that one," Mick added, clearly amused that the one from the most privileged background was the one who could make a sailor blush should the mood take her. "Anyway, considering everything Prophet's been through, he seems pretty cool about it all…very Zen," Mick shrugged nonchalantly.

It was true, Prophet was perhaps a little _too_ philosophical for Mick's liking, but his quiet, relaxed demeanour and wry sense of humour made working with the man very easy and a lot of fun, and the guy was so laid back he was almost horizontal. His experiences both on the Force and in prison allowed Simms to view their cases with a different outlook to the others, but he was always sympathetic and understanding with the victims while trying to avoid allowing pity to guide him, and Mick had quickly found himself respecting the soft-spoken man from Atlanta.

"And Gina?" Sam asked with one arched brow.

"She's smart, passionate and very dedicated," Mick acknowledged. "Also, like I said, she's stood by Prophet through all the crap he's being forced to endure at the Academy, so she gets kudos for that – she seems pretty loyal."

"But…?" Sam prodded.

"But she doesn't really like me much, I reckon," Mick offered with a small grin, seemingly not too bothered by La Salle's none-too-subtle dislike of him. In truth, it did bother him, but at the same time he had been through more than enough crap in his life that at the end of the day, one person's bad opinion of him was not going to break him. He’d worked alongside plenty of people who weren’t friends before, he could do it again.

"She just doesn't know you, yet," Sam tried to justify her behaviour.

"She doesn't _want_ to know me," Mick pointed out.

"You don't _let_ people know you," Sam replied knowingly.

Mick just shook his head, having had the same _'discussion'_ with Sam several times before, all to no avail.

"It's true, Mick," Sam stated calmly. "The life you've led has made you cautious of people, left you untrusting – it is an instinct that has saved your life before and may well do so again, so I can't wholly condemn it. However, it does affect the way you interact with people.

"Gina's had her own experiences that left her somewhat wary of openly trusting anyone and forging deep relationships. For a long time growing up her only constant companion was her sister and Gina was fiercely loyal to her, but that came with complications and a price. I won't go into the details of her past with you anymore than I would about your past with her, but she _is_ worth the patience, Mick – I assure you, she is a friend worth having."

"I _am_ trying," the Welshman promised quietly, earnestly.

"I know," Sam smiled kindly. "All I'm asking is that you don't stop trying."

* * *

"You ok, Mick?" Sam asked gently, already guessing what was on the younger man's mind.

He had been hard on the three of them the past few weeks, pushing them to look beyond the very worst of crimes to see the bigger picture, to make them understand that sometimes they would be met with terrible sights that would not be dampened by any amount of experience but that they would need to work through regardless as they sought to understand the behaviour that led to such brutality. He needed to know and, more importantly, he needed them to know that they could cope and had sought over the past few weeks to find past cases that would strike a chord with each and every one of them, purposefully pushing their emotional buttons to see their reactions. Today had been Mick's turn.

They had spent the day going over a particularly violent cold case – it wasn't one that Sam had ever worked originally, having occurred during his long hiatus from the FBI, but any cases that involved the deaths of children got his immediate attention. The bloody murder of a single mother and her three children remained unsolved and had not been linked to any other cases, but the sheer brutality of the murders, the ritualistic positioning of the bodies, the fact that nothing had been stolen and the lack of any material reason for the attack had brought the case to the BAU's attention.

Prophet had understood the brutality with a greater degree of ease than the other two – his own past reminding him of just how easy it was to kill someone, and his time on the Police Force and his acquaintances forged during his sentence in San Quentin had given him the knowledge and experience of such crimes before.

Where Prophet was upset but coping, Gina, who was fresh out of the Academy, had struggled with the stark, bloody images and brutal behaviour put in front of her, especially regarding the young girl. She had tried to keep her chin up, compartmentalise and pretend that she remained unaffected, but as the day wore on her façade had well and truly cracked, leaving her short-tempered and sharp-tongued.

Mick, who had seen terrible things both in his own childhood and during his time in the military, was relatively unaffected by the gory visages themselves, but the personal connotations of such a crime had caused him to retreat into himself, offering suggestions when prompted but otherwise silent and distant, stuck in his own head, no doubt with bloody images of his own past running through his mind.

Prophet had gone down to the gym floor to work out some of his anguish on a punch-bag, and Sam was more than content for him to use up his aggression on an inert object rather than an actual person. Gina had retreated further into the Red Cell's offices, using a room at the back of the building to collect herself away from prying eyes.

So it was just him and Mick left sitting at the table with the case files still opened up in front of them with the gory horror taunting them from every vividly crisp image. Sam closed the file in front of Mick and called his name again gently.

"Yeah," Mick eventually replied, his gaze fixed on an indeterminate spot on the table. "I'm fine."

Sam didn't believe him for a second but remained quiet, having long since learnt to be patient with Mick if he wanted the Welshman to open up about whatever thoughts were plaguing him.

"It's just…" Mick sighed, struggling to express himself before he eventually looked into the concerned eyes of his friend. "A family annihilator – that's what you call them, right? I know the term, of course, from the classes at the Academy and the mountain of books you insist on me reading – I guess it's just…it is one thing to _read_ about it, but to _see_ it in those photos…to _understand_ it and then to go and give it so inadequate a name…"

"It's hard," Sam agreed. It was hard enough for him to see the bloody crime scene photos, even as an experienced profiler who had certainly seen a lot worse, but unlike Mick, he didn't have a violent and bloody encounter of his own to serve as a constant reminder for the duration of the case review.

"Is that what you'd call _them_ – the ones who killed my family?" Mick asked, his voice trembling with unspoken emotion.

"The psychopathology of those UnSubs would be…complicated, to say the least, and I don't think you could really give them any one label," Sam replied honestly after taking a few minutes to think it over, fine with giving his friend an answer but eager not to create yet another reason for the young man to feel anguished, as the biggest factor that removed the simplicity of a giving out a label such as _'family annihilator'_ was Mick's own continued existence.

"Welles is the man who actually _killed_ most of your family, but from everything you've said it wasn't his idea – his plethora of psychological problems made him vulnerable to manipulation and incapable of discerning right from wrong or maintaining any real goals with his actions while off his meds, _and_ the fact that he was influenced to do it makes him ineligible for the term, or at least makes the term inexact. As for the other UnSub, it is unclear what his goals were – he had the opportunity to kill you," Sam pointed out gently, desperate to be honest with his friend despite the unpleasantness of it all. "But he didn't take it, in fact he tried to protect you, so I would hesitate to call him a family annihilator, too – clearly there was something else at play."

"Yeah," Mick nodded, quietly taking in his friend's assessment but still unhappy. "I'm never going to know, am I? Never going to understand what happened that day? _Why_ it happened?"

"Unfortunately, we don't always get the answers we seek," Sam said softly. "Sometimes there are no discernible reasons and even if there are any, the reasons can simply be…inadequate."

"I'm thinking an inadequate reason would be better than no reason whatsoever," Mick replied bitterly.

"You say that now, but when you get that inadequate answer, it can feel just as bad as no answer at all, trust me on that," Sam informed the younger man, an earnest but world-weary tone that spoke to his own experience of just such a dilemma.

"Yeah," Mick agreed without really agreeing.

"Come on, you look like you need a beer," Sam said as he stood up and patted his friend on the shoulder.

"A _beer_?" Mick sounded insulted.

"Alright, something stronger," Sam laughed out his agreement. "I'll go and find Gina and lock up the office and meet you in the gym – see if you can persuade Prophet to come along." He stood and watched Mick leave before Sam turned around and faced the other door. "How much of that did you overhear?"

"Most of it," Gina confessed as she stepped in facing the floor in an effort to hide her shame at being caught out.

"He won't appreciate you finding out like that – if he'd been any less absorbed in his thoughts he would have known that you were there listening in, too. You should be grateful he was distracted – trust doesn't come to him easily, but it _is_ easily lost," Sam informed her, his tone gentle but the reprimand clear.

"Sorry," Gina replied quietly. "I just…I wanted to know what…" she struggled to find the right words.

"I know," Sam agreed with a small, understanding smile. "He's a hard man to get to know – with Mick, what you see is so very rarely what is actually there beneath the surface. But Gina, he _is_ a man worth getting to know, and I guarantee you, if _you_ make the effort so will _he_ , but this is _not_ the way to go about it."

Gina looked up at her mentor then, easily able to read the conviction in Cooper's face and feeling a little bewildered and somewhat ashamed that she seemed so unable to profile the one member of the team that was causing her the most unease – every time she thought she had Mick figured out, he would go and do something or say something that seemed to contradict her assessment of him, or Cooper's own conviction would arouse her self-doubt.

Prophet, for all of his troubled past and his experiences with jail, was not a problem for her – he was often a difficult man to read emotion-wise, hiding beneath a stoic façade and a Zen-like approach to life, but he was an easy man to get along with, nonetheless, and relatively frank about his life and all he had been through.

She knew that he had grown up in poverty, struggling to make ends meet and continue his education unhindered. She knew that he had worked his arse off to get through the Police Academy and excelled enough to be made one of the youngest detectives in his department. She knew all the details surrounding his arrest and subsequent time in jail, as he was open and honest about what jail had meant for him and how it had changed him. She even knew that his mother had died while he was serving his sentence and how much that had devastated him. Oh, Gina was sure that there were all sorts of details he kept back for himself, but the main facts were all there, out in the open.

While Prophet was a relatively open-book, Mick was very much a closed one, tightly bound and under lock and key. She only knew that he had been SAS because of something Cooper had let slip, and therefore she understood that Rawson's time in the military was confidential, having served in Special Forces from his passing out parade to the current day, but he didn't share any of the details that _would_ be allowed, either – she knew nothing about the men and women he had served with, what he did around base to occupy his time, and, what she _most_ wanted to know, how he had met Cooper.

If Mick was quiet about his time in the military, he was positively silent about life before that. She knew he was Welsh because his accent was unmistakable, but other than that she couldn't name one solid fact about him other than the fact that he liked his beer and could charm his way into a woman's bed with nothing but a smile and a hint of his accent.

It was frustrating to know so little about the man who could seemingly rile her up with only the slightest twitch of his lips or a raised eyebrow. She found herself doubting the so-called _'natural instincts'_ that had Cooper so convinced that she was destined for a future in the BAU.

However, if she was really honest with herself, she had to admit that her aggravation wasn't born only out of an inability to read the contrary Welshman, but also out of a sense of envy that existed due to the close friendship the soldier shared with Cooper – it was a bond that, before meeting Rawson, she'd thought she alone shared with the profiler and had cherished the sense of belonging and self-worth that Cooper and his faith in her inspired.

Growing up, her father had been military to the core, and even during the months at home between tours he had been as strict with his daughters as he had been with his soldiers. Her early years had been a lonely time – moving around from military base to military base during her childhood had ensured that she was never in one place long enough to make long-lasting friendships.

For a while, the few short years between her and her older sister had melted away in the face of the strong friendship they had formed in an effort to fight away the loneliness brought about by their somewhat nomadic lifestyle. As they grew up past the easy stage of play occupied with dolls and princesses, as their father quickly climbed the ranks and they ended up with a fancy off-base home in Arlington, the two sisters found friends beyond their own company.

Their strong friendship eventually withered away to next to nothing as their father sought to constantly pit one sister against the other. Gina had no doubt that he had meant well, that he'd been attempting, at the very least, to push his children to succeed, but with the understanding brought about by age and the benefit of hindsight, she couldn't help but resent him for all that it had cost her.

The close sisterly bond had faded away in the face of the constant one-upmanship that their father's tough-love approach to parenting had elicited, as each sought to win the approval of their frequently absent father, ignorant of the long-term costs – their father would return from his latest tour of duty and the friendship would turn to one of near enmity as their bond was replaced by resentment whenever one received the love and attention they both so desired. As quickly as he came, the high-ranking soldier would return to duty leaving a pair of embittered sisters behind, the latest sting of cruel words too fresh to ignore – by the time things settled down between them, he would be back for a week of leave and the whole cycle would start again.

Gina did well academically, but she always found something lacking in her school life and sought to find that missing component in extra-curricular activities, never putting as much effort into her schoolwork as she could have done, but while her sister had to work a little harder for her grades, she was much more dedicated to school life, achieving more academically and therefore seen as more worthy than Gina ever was in their father's eyes.

The military had been deemed off-limits to them both as their father was old-fashioned in regards to the forces and saw it as a boys-only club. His daughters were expected to achieve a high level of success, nonetheless – he pushed and pushed and had all but decided their courses for them, only Gina didn't agree with his vision of her future at medical school and beyond.

West Point had been a last-ditch effort, an attempt to earn her father's approval without actually bowing down to his demands for her future. She had enjoyed the challenge of it all, enjoyed the wide-range of experiences she had at her fingertips, but sitting in classes there she had constantly found her mind drifting back to an evening at her parent's home, to the last time Sam Cooper had been there before she'd left for West Point.

Cooper had known her father for almost twenty years, and had been an acquaintance of the family for a little over fifteen years, so it was fair to say that Sam Cooper had seen the very worst of her teenage-rebellion. However, despite her discomfort with his profiling abilities and the very obvious resentment she held for her father due to the almost insupportable tension at home that she laid wholly at his feet, Cooper had never treated her with anything less than kind understanding.

Where her father seemingly made it a point to praise her sister in front of her without commentating on her own latest achievements, Cooper seemed to take an interest in her and her abilities – he was nice and he listened and he valued her opinions. Where her father dismissed her intelligence, Cooper made her feel not just clever, but insightful, too, and he supported her in the extra-curricular activities that she was determined to pursue and her father was equally as determined to condemn – the profiler encouraged Gina in all of her endeavours, stating that grades were not the be all and end all in life and that while she was young she had the freedom to explore her options without limiting them. It was also Sam Cooper who had managed to convince her disapproving father to accept her choices – the soldier was never _happy_ with them, but he did learn to give his daughter the room to live her own life.

Before Cooper left the Bureau, her father had crossed paths with him on a professional level, and while he generally regarded the profiling business as _'wishy-washy pseudo-scientific drivel'_ he had grown to respect Cooper, and that respect had only grown when Cooper ended up embedded with the Marines out in the deserts of Iraq (Gina was pretty sure Coop had her father's help in getting such a lucrative position right off the bat, which lead to her worrying that her place on the Red Cell was down to a tit-for-tat basis). The usually hard-to-please General had been impressed with the former profiler's work and the intelligence he had achieved during his interrogations, and invited him to many a family dinner when they returned Stateside.

That last time, she'd been home for the weekend, pretending that the faux-sentiments of a happy family were bearable rather than painful. The talk between her and her father had been strained at best, given her decision to forgo medical school and apply to West Point instead – meanwhile, her sister reaped the rewards of following through with their father's advice of going into law and joining a good firm. Gina was left to feel like a disappointment and had felt thoroughly uncomfortable for most of the meal.

Then Sam Cooper had engaged her in a conversation and she forgot all about the disapproving stare of her father, the smug look on her sister's face and the perpetually sad tint to her mother's eyes. She had found the former FBI Agent to be clever and engaging without being condescending, and he had shown interest in what she was intending to study when her own father couldn't even accept her decision to focus on several different courses rather than one.

Of course, by that stage, her understanding of Cooper's former profession had grown and she had talked his ear off for the rest of the evening inquiring about life in the BAU. She had been fascinated by the methods used and how they were applied worldwide to catch the most despicable of criminals. That was the first time she had ever really considered focusing on her psychology courses and the possibility of a career inside the FBI.

Of course, back then, no matter how unhappy she had been, she'd still been determined to earn her father's approval and so she put aside her dreams of doing something more meaningful with her life and sought to graduate from West Point. There was plenty to see and learn and she made some good friends during her time there, but at the end of each day she felt a deep sense of un-fulfilment.

A return home for a long weekend that saw one too many snide remarks from her father awakened her to reality as nothing had done before – she realised that no matter what she did, it would never be enough for her demanding father. Even West Point and all of the prestige associated with being accepted into the academic programme there had not been enough for the man and Gina had felt a fierce wave of resentment on realising just how little value her father had placed on her achievements simply because she had sought to do things her own way rather than his.

On returning to West Point, she packed up her things and moved into a friend's place back in DC, sleeping on a sofa until she got herself enrolled at the Academy and well on to the way to becoming an FBI Agent. Her father had been predictably furious, cursing Cooper for garnering her interest in the profession in the first place, then did his best to ignore her _'foolish actions'_ by promising that he would smooth things over with the admissions office at West Point so that she could return to her studies there – Gina had never been happier that she inherited her father's stubborn streak than in that moment.

Since she started at the Academy, things had been frosty between them to say the least and Cooper offering her a spot on a prize team had done nothing to change that – she knew that General La Salle, like she herself did, believed that Cooper had only offered her the position because of their long-term friendship. The General did not look on the profiler's actions with a kind eye and had shared more than a few choice words with Cooper about not only his hiring of Gina and her new, questionable teammates, but about what he should expect from _her_ in the future – in essence, her father was just waiting for her to screw up and then give up.

Conversely, Mick Rawson, with his long-time service in the military and placement in the UKSF would be the one teammate that her father _would_ approve of – perhaps that was one of the reasons she was so determined to dislike the man, as yet another part of her long-standing rebellion against her father.

It was hard to picture her new teammate as a hardened soldier, and yet she knew enough to know that anyone who had made it into the SAS and stayed there for any length of time would have experienced the very worst of situations in the most tumultuous areas of war-torn countries. Rawson's easy smile and teasing nature belied the man's experiences, and clearly more than just those of his time in the military.

"He never said anything," Gina said softly, aware that even as she spoke the words it did not excuse her eavesdropping on a private and obviously painful conversation. God, if the latest case file had been hard on her, she dreaded to think what it had been like for the Welshman.

"He rarely does," Cooper offered quietly but pointedly. "I’d only learnt most of the details myself these past few months and I've known him for years – even now, I doubt I have the full story, or that I ever will."

"How old was he?" she asked Cooper, equally as afraid as she was curious of the answer.

"When he lost his family?" Sam clarified, receiving only a nod in response he continued, "He was ten, and his sister was six. They were separated after that and they grew up apart but they remain close and anything else you want to know you will have to get from him."

' _Ten'_ , Gina thought sadly. She knew that she was only about a year and a half younger than him and by then she had still been on good terms with her sister – still running all over the latest military base as they played hide-and-seek and tug-of-war with their dog, and raced their bicycles along the winding streets of the officers' neighbourhood. She couldn't imagine what they must have gone through – surviving the loss of their family in what had clearly been traumatic circumstances only to end up being separated from all they had left…each other.

Having spent quite a bit of time around Mick Rawson for the past few weeks, training in the gym, going over old case files together and taking classes at the Academy, she would never have guessed from the man's demeanour that he had endured such tragedy in his childhood. Suddenly, Rawson's reluctance to open up and share himself with those who were still practically strangers made a lot more sense – the reluctance wasn't from some macho persona he was trying to portray or drawn from some ridiculously chauvinistic notions or some military-ingrained sense of superiority, but was likely due to the difficulty in talking about a life that she could not even imagine, one full of trials that had long since caused him to be wary of opening up to anyone.

It felt a little ridiculous now that she had been so jealous of the soldier given all he had suffered through. Her anger over what she had perceived as him insinuating himself in Coop's life and his generous heart while her own insecurities insisted that she was being pushed out, ignored because of Mick Rawson, now seemed beyond redundant – Sam Cooper had filled that hole in her heart left by her father and his low expectations and cruel words, and Gina knew that she had long since come to regard him as more than just a friend and mentor, and he was certainly more than just a mere boss, but now she knew the same was somewhat true for Rawson.

She didn't know if Rawson had anyone besides his sister as he had certainly not mentioned any of his friends, and Gina had the feeling that his real friends were few and far between – Cooper was obviously one of the few. The sniper clearly trusted Cooper and he never seemed bothered by the older man's bouts of darkness, in fact, he was frequently the only one able to elicit a smile in the profiler with little to no effort on those melancholier days.

Gina didn't know how the two had met, how they had become such good friends, and although she envied the easy camaraderie between the two men, wished her own relationship with Cooper was as free, clear of any and all surrogate-father connotations, knowing what she did now she could not find it within herself to try and interfere in that relationship.

It was clear that she had misjudged the sniper – unsure of even the most basic facts of his history, she had nevertheless decided on his character, and her profile had been flawed because of it. She trusted Sam Cooper with every fibre of her being and it was clear to her that he trusted Mick above all, and while there was still a slight pang in her chest at no longer being the only one to be considered family by the older man, she knew that she had to give Mick Rawson a chance…a _real_ chance, one unhindered by her own insecurities.

"You said something about a drink?" Gina asked quietly. "The guys will be wondering where we are."

Sam watched with no small degree of pride as Gina swallowed down her questions and headed determinedly out towards the gym area. She had avoided sharing drinks with Mick since that first meeting, and Sam hoped it was a sign that they were both finally ready to meet each other half way and get to know each other properly, without bad first impressions and past experiences colouring their opinion.

He was grateful that Prophet, for all of his past troubles, was relatively normal and well put together because he suspected that he would need an extra hand from time to time to corral Mick and Gina – the two equally headstrong and passionate young team members were bound to clash again, and Cooper could only hope that friendship and a genuine regard for each other would allow those clashes to become more humorous and less barbarous.

"I imagine Mick will tell me it's my round," Sam said, shaking his head with amusement, relief at the signs of Gina's abating resentment finally allowing him to relax.

"Isn't that funny," Gina commented wryly, a cheeky grin on her face. "I was just thinking the same thing. Mick, Prophet…Coop’s buying, let's go!"

Mick stopped his conversation with Prophet and looked at La Salle with some surprise and a hint of suspicion – since he had arrived, the young woman had made it a point to never refer to him by his first name even as she called Simms by his more personable nickname. Now, he was not only _'Mick'_ , but he was also getting a smile directed his way.

He had a vague idea about what might have happened to bring about such a change and with a quick, questioning look at Sam, Mick caught the slight nod – so…Gina had caught some of their conversation. Mick hoped that the change of heart was not solely down to a sense of pity about his tragic past, equally, he didn't really feel as though he could hold it against her if that _was_ the case – she was making an effort and at the end of the day what had elicited such a change should take second place to the fact that she was actually trying.

"Alright, but obviously I need you to tell me more about what you Americans put on the top shelf," Mick answered, a cheeky smile hiding back his doubts as he looked back at Gina. "I'd hate to think that Coop thought we were only worth a lousy cheap beer."

"I've seen a great scotch on the top shelf," Prophet offered, laughing out loud at the affronted look on Coop's face but easily able to read the relief in the other man as the two youngest members seemingly opened up to the possibility of becoming more than just teammates.

"You know you're not actually _in_ the Red Cell yet – this is just the test phase," Sam warned them good-humouredly.

"Well, _your_ test is seeing how good of a boss you are," Mick countered. "I'm sure the FBI Brass won't want to see someone who doesn't care about their team being in charge of a Red Cell."

"I'm not sure the FBI's definition of a _'good boss'_ would match yours, Mick," the Profiler replied. "A bunch of misfits don't exactly rank highly on their list of concerns."

"Isn't it a good thing that you're not the type of man to try and impress the FBI Brass, then," Gina smiled sweetly. "After all, the _agents_ are more important than the _bureaucracy_ , right?"

Sam's eyes narrowed at having his own words thrown back at him, recalling the conversation they had shared many years ago now when Gina had first asked him why he had left the Bureau – he'd given half an answer and knew that she had not been satisfied with it, but she clearly remembered the whole conversation.

"He said that about the military, too," Mick offered in a stage whisper to the blond. "I'm pretty sure it just means he hates authority figures."

"That's what I thought," Gina agreed. "I reckon it's because…"

"Bar!" Sam interrupted the teasing directed his way, only to have them all laugh at him. "You," he said jabbing Prophet in the chest as he headed towards the doors, "are an adult and therefore supposed to be on my side."

"An _'adult'_?" Gina asked archly.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" Mick demanded at the same time, fully offended by the implication. "Just because _you're_ old doesn't mean that we…"

"Mick?" Sam interrupted once again.

"Yeah?" the Welshman replied, an impish grin spreading across his face as the troubles of the day melted away with the fun of the teasing banter, all the more enjoyable for _everyone's_ participation.

"Bar…now!"

"Aye, sir!" Mick saluted the man as he walked through the door, loudly whispering to Gina as he went: "God, getting old looks like hell."

"We're getting there," Prophet shrugged with an unapologetic grin of his own once the other two were out of the door.

"We're getting there," Sam agreed with a smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_I decided to have Mick stay with Sam as he seemed to be the only one not shocked by Sam's apartment in 1.11_ **
> 
> **_The unhappy family situation with Gina and the way she views Sam as a father-figure come mainly from comments from her and Cooper during 1.12._**


	19. Chapter 19

"Jesus Christ!" Mick complained loudly as he entered the gym. "What the hell was the point of that?"

"I think they just like torturing us," Gina replied miserably, rubbing at her eyes. "I can't believe they _still_ hurt after all this time!"

"Wow, you two look like crap," Prophet laughed, as he walked in and saw his two rather miserable looking colleagues.

"Where the hell were you?" Gina demanded testily.

"Coop needed my help with a cold case…some CI in Philly had connections that could have broken open a new lead, and Sam wanted someone with local knowledge to help him out."

"Did anything come of it?" Gina asked shortly, not in the least bit appeased no matter how valid the excuse.

"Nah, it was a bust," Prophet shook his head. "But I'm thinking that a long day of wasting our time following the word of a strung-out druggie in Philly might still have been the better option, judging by the state of you two."

"So maybe now we can dose _you_ up with the pepper-spray, mate," Mick said, his red eyes testament to his own fun-filled day at the Academy. "After all, we wouldn't want you to fall behind in class."

"I think I'll cope," Prophet put his hands up and backed away, laughing at the indignant expressions on both of his teammates' faces.

"You reckon he knew what we were getting into today?" Mick asked suspiciously.

"Probably," Gina narrowed her eyes at the retreating form of Simms.

* * *

"No way!" Gina denied vehemently. They were once again at the nearby bar sharing a few drinks after a long day of studying old case files.

"I swear to God," Mick said, holding his hand across his heart. "You should have seen the black eye on the guy - that might have faded, but the crooked nose he's got on him will tell the story from now until kingdom come! I'm telling you, Coop became a legend to the troops after that."

"I can't believe you punched a two-star General!" Gina exclaimed, disbelief clearly written across her face. " _You_ , who gave me God _knows_ how many lectures growing up about controlling your anger rather than letting _it_ control _you!_ "

"Don't give me that," Sam protested quietly at the way the young woman was shaking her head in incredulity even as the amusement shone clearly from her eyes. "He deserved it, besides, getting injured in a war zone…the son of a bitch probably got a Purple Heart out of it."

"The one who really deserved it for that particular incident was sitting pretty back here in DC," Mick disagreed. "But Walker is a right bloody wanker and knocking the pompous prick on his arse is not something I could ever be too upset about, so Coop, I'd say that alone has earned you legendary status with every grunt in Helmand."

"What incident?" Prophet asked curiously.

Gina leaned forward too, eager to learn anything and everything she could about what could possibly have riled her mentor so completely. Both Sam and Mick were close-mouthed at the best of times about what had happened during their time in the military, and although Cooper had worked in Intel and Mick in Special Forces and a degree of secrecy was to be expected from both, she thought they took their oaths a little too seriously as not everything in military life needed to be wrapped in confidentiality.

She did not miss the look that passed between the two men, but for all of her training and her _'instincts'_ that Cooper seemed so keen to highlight, she could discern nothing in the loaded glances. She felt that bitterness climb up her throat once more as the unwelcome feeling of jealousy raised its ugly head again, but then she caught the look of shame that quickly flitted across her mentor's face.

"Nothing, just some crap with the Brass – you know how those higher-ups get when they feel their arses aren't being kissed with the appropriate amount of reverence," Mick shrugged indifferently, giving off the impression that the _'incident'_ truly was inconsequential. If Gina hadn't caught that flash of remorse on Cooper’s face then she might have believed the careless tone – she resolved there and then to never play poker with Mick.

Her jealousy gave way to compassion for her mentor and gratitude for the protection he was afforded by the soldier sat next to him – clearly whatever had happened back in Afghanistan had been hard for Cooper, judging by the timing perhaps it had even been what had gotten him to leave the military, and for that, no matter what the circumstances were surrounding the fracas with a General, she would always be grateful.

"Well, I think I know one or two things about the way military Brass works," Gina said wryly, moving the subject on and catching the appreciative nod from the Welshman – clearly he had known she was watching him.

"I'm sure your father is the exception to the rule," Mick replied cheekily.

"He's a good man," Sam said firmly, looking at the young woman with a degree of sincerity he tended to keep for work. "And he's an intelligent man, but he is often quite blind as to what is right in front of him."

"The narrow-focus of the military man," Gina lamented dryly, although the pain in her eyes was obvious to anyone who cared to look for it.

"Hey!" Mick cried indignantly. "I think…"

"I'm sure we can all guess what you think," Prophet laughed. He'd not known Mick long, but it was clear that the Army and the men he served with still meant a lot to the Welshman, and it was easy to see why the younger man had been so conflicted about leaving that life behind him completely. Mick grumbled away to himself as he stood and walked towards the bar – Prophet only laughed harder.

"You know, before I met him I don't think I'd ever even heard a _word_ of Welsh, now…well, _now_ I'm hearing it all too often but I kind of get the feeling that if I were to use _those_ words in Wales, talking to some local in a bar, for example, I'd get my ass kicked."

"I know about five phrases in Welsh," Sam agreed. "All of them would get you more than an ass-kicking."

"You _think_ you know five phrases in Welsh, Coop," Mick retorted as he set a tray down on the table with the next round. "But you don't need to worry – any Welshman you spoke to would be too busy laughing their arses off rather than thinking about kicking yours."

"Thanks," Sam laughed, not in the least bit insulted, all too aware that his Welsh accent bordered on the unintelligible at the best of times.

"Profiling, crime-fighting and now language lessons? Well, I can see I'm missing out," came an amused voice from behind.

"Beth," Sam greeted the woman happily. "Glad you could make it – now you can meet the last member of the team. Mick Rawson, Beth Griffith."

"Now then," Mick greeted the woman, offering his hand.

"Ah, the Prodigal Son," Beth smiled as she shook his hand.

Mick's eyes narrowed at the comment and he looked to Sam for clarification, but none was forthcoming.

"Oh, don't worry," Beth said with a dismissive wave of her hand. "He's only had good things to say about you…about _all_ of you. I just hope he's been nice enough to talk about _me_ in the same way."

"Well…he _did_ say something about maybe needing a rabies shot…" Mick replied teasingly.

"Bite one arrogant son of a bitch and you never hear the end of it," Beth countered with deadpan humour.

"I think I'm going to like you, Agent Griffith," Mick laughed as he grabbed her a seat from a neighbouring table. He was glad to see a sense of humour in the older woman, as he had a feeling that his new job was going to need a little light relief every now and then, and military life had long since indoctrinated him into the coping method that involved friendly insults and gallows humour.

"Well, you would be one of the few…and it's Beth," the brunette stated firmly. She had never been a fan of authority as her no-nonsense approach to life, both personal and professional, meant that she would rather people dispense with the trappings of rank and instead just get to the damn point. So far, Cooper seemed to be pretty blunt.

She liked her future boss – while the man could beat around the bush with the best of them should the mood strike him, most of the time he, too, liked to get straight to the heart of the matter. His direct approach was an honest one, sometimes brutally so, and his disdain for the inefficiency of the bureaucratic Brass, a feeling she certainly understood, was known throughout the FBI and had been one of the things that had made her seriously consider the move to the new Red Cell Unit.

Sam had even more reprimands in his file than her own, but Beth did not see that as a bad thing given her own experience with just how unfair that whole system could be. Besides, the older man had so far come across as nothing less than wholly dedicated to doing the job to the best of his ability and while his methods might not always be the most orthodox, she found his out-of-the-box thinking a refreshing approach to law-enforcement and it gave her hope that her own ideas would not be dismissed out of hand.

Cooper had been very frank with her on their first meeting in explaining what the job would entail, and while she still had difficulty understanding exactly why it was that she of all people had been requested by the man for the Red Cell, she liked that she knew exactly what was expected of her in her new role. For the first time in a long time she felt as though she not only had a position where she _could_ excel, but one where, with the understanding of her boss, she _would_ excel.

Her new team, too, gave her hope. She was beyond glad that so far the reaction from them had been overwhelmingly positive, as she'd certainly had no need for profiling courses to know just what most of her previous colleagues in the FBI had thought of her.

She was never particularly surprised at the animosity that surrounded her at the FBI, it had followed her all the way through high school, college and then the Academy, after all. She had enough psychological training to know that growing up an only child with a frequently absent father and an overbearing mother had left her at somewhat of a disadvantage, socially speaking - to say that she lacked tact was probably the kindest way of stating it.

Her father had been a neurosurgeon and had always seemed to spend more time at the hospital than he had ever done at home, and his own level of success in his field had meant that he'd had equally high expectations of his only child. The few times that he deigned to remember his paternal duties it was with the single-minded intention of convincing his daughter to follow in his footsteps and enter into the medical profession.

Her mother had been more present than her father, but only physically speaking – her father's profession had ensured they were never lacking financially and her mother had taken full advantage of that fact, passing the day with Long Island Iced Tea and late lunches, and spending the evenings flitting between fancy restaurants and various fundraising events for the hospital. When at home, while her mother had never hurt her, physically or emotionally, Beth had always had her mother's expectations forced on her – her father cared about her career and her mother cared about appearances.

So concerned was she with the way her family was perceived that for Mrs Griffith everything about appearance was crucial, no matter how superficial. Every piece of clothing, every drop of make-up, every hairstyle, every friend and boyfriend had to be vetted by her mother and if any of it did not meet her approval, then Beth suffered through the consequences of constant disapproval and lectures about the importance of appearance. What was worse was that with every beep of his pager, her father was rarely around to run interference and Beth was left to herself, receiving nothing but criticism and garnering fierce resentment towards all things superficial.

There was a stage during her teenaged years when Beth had reacted as every normal teenager in her position would – she rebelled. She actively sought to do everything possible to piss off both of her parents - for a while, schoolwork fell to the side as she ditched classes and drank and smoked and generally did anything she could that she knew would embarrass her parents. She had even smashed her father's pager into a million pieces once, giving as clear a signal as she could imagine as to her feelings at that time.

Thankfully she'd had a good teacher, one who took the time to take her aside and allowed her to see that the only one she was affecting with her antics was herself, and with a little time, a lot of self-examination and several trips to a counsellor, Beth got her act together and sorted herself out.

She'd never been one to hold her tongue and at school she had often been called abrasive by students and teachers alike. With little patience for the superficiality of high school and a complete unwillingness to play the popularity game, she had instead chosen to focus on her studies. Leaving school with good grades but few real friends had not much bothered her, as by then she'd already picked up the courage to tell her father that she had no intention of going into the medical profession, and that she wanted to go and work in law enforcement and help people that way instead. So, with excellent grades, a hell of a lot of determination and finally, a good head on her shoulders, she went to a decent college and took several courses with the express aim of getting into the Academy.

She'd thrived at the Academy, before graduating in the top five of her class with the belief that her brilliant record would allow her the chance to choose her posting – she'd gone into counter-terrorism almost straight off the bat, only to find out that her dreams had far exceeded the reality.

Even though she had only been a rookie, she had still expected her opinion to hold at least some weight, only to find out that her superiors didn't want to hear anyone's opinion but those that backed up their own. As before, she had frequently found it difficult to hold her tongue and more often than not found herself in deep water for her insistence on giving her superiors her own opinion, no matter how unsolicited.

Before the end of her first year in active service she had already been labelled as a trouble-maker, an insubordinate agent whose loud, unwanted opinions were to be ignored and whose position was anything but secure. Beth found herself being shuttled between assignments, a different department almost every year and a new boss to go with it, one just as unwilling to deal with her as their predecessors.

Her latest posting to the counter-terrorism taskforce was, if not much fun on a personal level, valuable professionally – she felt as though she had done a lot of good, and while her own instincts were not always taken into account, her statistical findings were irrefutable and saw positive outcomes. However, she was looking forward to the end of the assignment, to joining Cooper's team, to getting a posting where _she_ would actually make a difference rather than the data she crunched, more than anything, she was looking forward to working with people who were looking forward to working with her.

"So, who's buying?" she asked before looking at the grinning Welshman. "I'm thinking you."

"I agree," Gina said cheekily.

"I just bought you all a round," Mick countered, pointing to the full glass in front of the blonde. "And it's sitting right there, untouched. But I'll go and get Beth something – what do you want?"

"A club soda and lime, please," Beth smiled as she sat down at the table.

"Please tell me you're joking," Mick replied with an incredulous look on his face.

"A drink doesn't have to come with a percentage on the bottle, Mick," Sam reminded his friend with amusement.

"We're at a _bar_!" Mick pointed out slowly, as though he were talking to a small child.

"I have work tomorrow," Beth explained.

"We _all_ do, and we have the rest of the night to sober up," Mick replied with a grin.

"Club soda and lime, please," Beth repeated sweetly.

"As the lady wishes," Mick sighed heavily with exaggerated disappointment before going to the bar.

"So…" Beth started, not sure where to start with her new teammate.

"Yep," Sam agreed. "I'm not sure if it's the Welsh blood in him, or the soldier but he likes a good pub session."

"Except we don't have pubs," Prophet laughed. "As he has pointed out many times."

"We _do_ have pubs," Gina disagreed. "There's The Clover over on Ninth, for one – an Irish pub, it says so right on the sign."

"Mick thinks it's too gimmicky to be classed as a real pub," Prophet shook his head, amused at his friend's adamant defence of the time-honoured traditions of the _'British Local'_. "Apparently, _nowhere_ does pubs like Britain."

"Is that an achievement?" Gina wondered out loud.

"Of course it is," Mick stated firmly as he sat back down, placing Beth's drink in front of her. "There _is_ no comparison between a pub and a bar – a pub wins every time. And Gina, anywhere that feels it has to point out the fact that it's a pub on a sign? Not a real pub."

"So this bar…?" Beth prompted.

"It's alright," Mick shrugged. "But it's no Red Lion."

"Coop, come on," Gina turned to her mentor, trying to get him involved in the discussion. "Surely you can see that he just doesn't appreciate a good old-fashioned American bar?"

"I'm with Mick on this one," Sam said, putting his hands up in a placating manner at the betrayed look that passed over the young blonde's face. "The Red Lion is amazing. I like a good bar, but I've stayed at a few pubs, with open fires, comfy seats, good food and proper beer - yeah, a good pub is really something."

"But then there's nothing worse than a bad pub, either, to be fair," Mick pointed out with a crooked grin, enjoying the combative look that crossed Agent Griffith's face at his latest assertion – Mick had the feeling he was going to enjoy a lot of good banter with the older woman.

"Oh, come on, make up your mind!" Beth exclaimed, throwing her hands up in the air with a dismissive noise.

Sam laughed, and leaned back in his seat, listening contentedly to the debate going on around him – it was all in good spirits and the teasing back and forth did a lot to break any lingering tension between the team as they finally sat all together in one spot for the first time.

It was good to see Beth interact so easily with Mick – he'd been worried that her strong views and no-nonsense attitude would mean frequent clashes between the two strong personalities. Whereas Beth was altogether more serious, Mick had a tendency to brush off the heavier stuff with a joke and redirect any uncomfortable topics with a suggestive comment or a purposefully incendiary one, and while they both liked people to get to the point, they had very different ways of going about it.

Beth would simply tell someone what she wanted from them, why she wanted it, even how she wanted the information given to her. She had no compunctions with being blunt to the point of rudeness with her superiors, having long since given up on the idea of advancing up the ranks of the FBI. Having been passed around from department to department, Beth had gathered few real friends and therefore there were very few people that she felt the need to tiptoe around and avoid offending. So far, she had been nothing but upfront with Cooper about what she expected from him as a superior and what she hoped her new assignment to the BAU would involve.

Mick, who had been in the military since the age of sixteen, was far more used to being given the run-around even as he wished his superiors would just get to the point. Having been in Special Forces his entire military career, Mick was used to not getting the full story, to being told only what was deemed necessary, and raising any concerns in private. The few times he and Mick had disagreed over a case, the Welshman had brought it up only out of earshot from the others, and while Sam appreciated it for the sign of respect it was, from one agent to a superior, he also wanted Mick to feel comfortable enough to be a little more vocal about his assertions, eager as he was for Mick to distance himself from all manner of military life.

As the night wore on, the team had shared several anecdotes from their various lives pre-BAU – Gina's tales were limited to West Point and the Academy, not yet ready to share her family life with the wider group, while Prophet, who had been involved in law enforcement a lot longer than most, shared several rather hilarious stories from his days in Vice, as well as the odd yarn from his stretch in San Quentin. Beth's stories were focused on the _'incompetent assholes in charge'_ as she switched between her various departments – some of her tales came across as a little belligerent at times and Cooper wondered what would come off an alcohol-loosened tongue given how free she seemed with her condemnation stone-cold sober, but all in all, the tone was more sarcastic and full of mockery than actual bitterness, and Sam was relieved to discover that.

After a little cajoling, both Mick and Sam shared a few more stories from their time in the military, keeping the topics light and cheerful and strictly away from any actual missions and lost comrades in arms. They even had a few stories that included them both and the rest of the team, Gina in particular, seemed as fascinated with the idea of Sam Cooper in a military setting as they were with the possibility of a serious and obedient Mick Rawson.

It was a relief to Sam, seeing everyone get along so easily. He had no illusions that life within the Red Cell would always be ideal, knew that there would be darker days when arguments would break out between the teammates and differences of opinion and experience would cause the odd fracture to appear. But the easy interaction between them all gave him hope that those days would not last long…that they would not be _allowed_ to last long.

"So what's her name?" Beth asked amusedly as she watched the lithe red-head lean forward at the bar just that bit more in an effort to afford the Welshman an even better view of her cleavage.

"God knows," Prophet shrugged, grinning at Beth, "But I wouldn't worry – I don't imagine it's a name we'll need to know for very long."

"Got that right," Gina mumbled somewhat sourly.

Beth looked piercingly at the young blonde, wondering if Gina's grumbled response about Mick's seemingly frequent conquests was due to an offended sense of feminine justice or if it was something deeper and she had perhaps developed some feelings for her teammate.

"So this happens a lot?" Beth wondered.

"Mick could charm the Devil out of his soul, given half a chance," Sam grinned crookedly.

"And it's not a problem?" Beth asked, surreptitiously glancing at Gina who was studiously pretending _not_ to watch Mick and the girl who was flirting with him.

"He's young and not looking to get involved in anything too serious while he figures out his long-term plans, and it doesn't interfere with his work in any way," Sam shrugged. "So I don't see any harm in it. As for the rest," Sam started, also giving a brief glance in Gina's direction. "Mick knows not to…overcomplicate certain matters."

"Understood," Beth smiled – reading between the lines, she caught Sam's meaning and knew that the complications of teammates dating were likely not something she'd have to worry about.

"What?" Gina asked, coming out of her daze as she forced herself to look away from the red-head giving Mick her number on a cocktail napkin – _classy girl_ , she thought mutinously!

"Nothing," Beth shook her head with a slight smile.

She was looking forward to working with this group of people and all of their idiosyncrasies merely made them that bit more appealing – there was no needless brown-nosing here, no constant need for one-upmanship that seemed to infect the more ambitious agents in some of the other departments she had worked in, agents who had trampled all over her and her work in the past in an effort to get ahead.

Sam Cooper was a godsend as far as Beth was concerned. She had been one step away from leaving the FBI altogether, had even been looking at the possibility of working in the private sector in consultancy, having given up any hope of ever being taken seriously within the Bureau. Then along comes Cooper, not only with a job offer but with a promise to let her utilise her many skills, and suddenly a future in the FBI seemed like the only viable option once more.

His faith in her was matched only by her faith in him – his no-bullshit approach to the job and his equal distain for all things bureaucratic already had him standing head and shoulders above all of her other former Lead Agents. She'd caught him on bad days and knew that he was not an unblemished soul, but his strength of character always seemed to help pull him through the worst the job had to throw at them, and his darker moods rarely tended to linger and Beth was frequently torn between admiring how easily he could slip between his own persona and that of an UnSub, and being freaked out by it. However, at the end of the day, she was simply excited to be working with someone who had such a great reputation inside the BAU and the profiling world as a whole.

Prophet could often come across as a little too serious, determined as he was at keeping his emotions locked tightly behind a stoic façade and a Zen-like philosophy towards life, but then given that the last time he had let his emotions run free he had ended up behind bars, Beth could admire that strong will of his and his determination to learn from past mistakes.

She had also discovered that he had a playful side with a strong sense of honour – Prophet's moral compass might seem like a bad one to set your watch by given the fact that he had spent time in prison, but his staunch beliefs and his quiet, unassuming approach to his faith were some of the qualities Beth most admired in the man.

Gina was clearly relatively untried in the world of law enforcement, having never served out in the field, but Beth could already see that the young woman's grit, determination and intelligence would serve her well in the future, helping her through the tougher aspects of the job and ensuring that she would never remain a simple field agent.

Her strong principles and the steely will she possessed to safeguard those principles were admirable traits, especially in one so young in her field. Beth had come across many a jaded agent, worn down by the demands of the job, and while Gina was often affected by what she saw in the cold cases she'd been perusing with Cooper, she used that to drive her forwards rather than down.

She had been a little more worried about Mick's position on the team – having picked up on the obvious signs of affection that Cooper held for the Brit, she had been left to hope that Cooper's attachment had not superseded his common sense and that the hire was made for all the right reasons. The few conversations that she had shared with the Welshman had given her little insight into his mental acuity during their time at the bar together, but his easy-going manner and ready acceptance of her despite all he must have heard through the grapevine had allowed her to relax a little bit, and had given her hope.

In spite of his young age, it was clear that Mick had seen and experienced more than most, and despite the fact that his only training in law enforcement so far consisted of a few courses taken at the Academy and whatever relevant aspects he might have covered during his time in the Army, he had shown a good grasp on the way things worked and had a natural instinct for it all, and Beth was looking forward to seeing how he approached a working case as opposed to a cold one.

Yep, she thought to herself as she looked around the bar, taking in Mick and the flirty red-head, a contented Sam and a bickering Prophet and Gina who seemed to be laying down odds on Mick's latest fling, she could work with these people - as unorthodox as they were, the team of misfits that she was now a part of felt like she had finally found a home inside the FBI.


	20. Chapter 20

"When's he coming back?" Gina asked Sam once again.

"His CO said he would be catching a flight with US troops back to the States, arriving some time later tonight," Sam confirmed wearily for the fifth time that day.

"Well…we're going to pick him up from the base, right?" Gina enquired.

" _I_ am going to pick him up from the base," Sam corrected patiently. They had been having this back and forth for almost four weeks now. Four weeks since Mick had been called away to God knows where to do God knows what, four weeks with no word until three days ago when Sam got a call from Pryce saying that Mick was in bad shape physically and a dark place emotionally, and that he would be returning to America and the FBI in a few days.

That was it – no explanation, no proper status report, and most importantly, still no word from Mick. Pryce had let him know when and where Mick would be landing – a nearby military base – but he had said nothing as to Mick's status other than the fact that he was mobile.

Being on a team of profilers had its drawbacks, and one of those had meant that during the past few days, as he stewed over the gravity of Mick's possible circumstances, they had naturally picked up on his distress and after some gentle and persistent prodding from them and a little self-reflection on his part, Sam had decided that they had as much of a right to know as he did and he shared what little he _did_ know – that had been followed by a lot of questions and very little patience by the time the day was out.

"Coop," Prophet interjected hesitantly, aware of his friend's waning mood. "I gotta say…"

"What?" the team leader demanded somewhat tersely as he felt his patience run out.

"I get that you and Mick have this whole super-secret military past together, but you need to remember that we're a part of the same team now," Prophet explained. "Mick is a part of _our_ team and something's happened to him and we _all_ give a damn."

"Prophet…" Sam started.

"No, Cooper, he's right," Beth interrupted. "If this whole Red Cell thing is going to work, then you need to recognise that we come as a whole now, as well as individuals."

"Exactly," Gina agreed firmly. "We have a right to know about what is going on with our teammate."

"I know you do," Sam nodded. "That is why I told you, but like it or not, at the moment, I know Mick better than any of you and I know for certain that he will _not_ appreciate everyone crowding around him right now."

"We don't want to crowd around him!" Gina protested.

"We just want to make sure that he's ok," Prophet added, his concern for his new friend leaking into his whole tone and posture.

"Maybe we can come with you, hang back and just make sure that he's ok with our own eyes," Beth suggested in an effort to mediate, a role she was somewhat unused to, being that she was usually on one end of the hostilities or the other.

"Guys…" Sam started.

"Please, Coop, we _need_ this," Gina begged quietly. "We've had four weeks of not knowing where he is, what he's doing – we didn't even know if he was still _alive_ until a few days ago, for Christ's sake. You've spent all these months making us into a team…you can hardly complain when we start _acting_ like one."

Sam hung his head in sheer frustration – he knew that they had a point, that their concern for each other was something he had spent months cultivating, was something that he had wanted…desperately _needed_ for a viable Red Cell Unit, but he also knew Mick and he knew that the very last thing he would want, if things were as bad as Pryce had hinted at them being, was an audience. On the other hand, he thought that perhaps it would do Mick some good to focus on something else, to see how much he was already valued by his new team, how much he had a new place to which he could belong.

"It's not just you and Mick anymore, and you _both_ need to realise that," Prophet lightly reminded him again, almost as though he knew where Sam's own thoughts had taken him.

"Alright," Sam acquiesced. "You can come, but the moment it looks as though he wants you to leave, you need to leave – we don't know what's happened and we can't expect him to be alright just because we want him to be, understood?"

"Understood," Beth interjected firmly, shooting Gina a warning glance when the blonde looked ready to protest. Beth knew that Gina was concerned for their teammate – they had _all_ been concerned, even more so once they'd realised the true depth of Cooper's own anxiety – but the older woman also knew that it was not the time to push their boss.

She had been surprised at how much her new team had come to mean to her in such a short amount of time – she hadn't even officially started working with them yet, but Mick's absence, his potential demise on some foreign shore, had stoked up some fiercely protective feelings regarding her new unit. Beth was feeling for the first time that she had found a place, a _team_ where she could fit in, where she could belong and flourish, and she had grown to care about the misfits that she was destined to work with, even as they were still virtual strangers to her in many ways.

Beth had been flitting in and out of the gym and the Red Cell's life, helping on cases when her heavy workload permitted but usually just joining them late into the evening once work was done and dusted and unwinding from the demands of the job became an imperative. They talked mainly about work, a common familiarity slowly building up before the topics turned to more personal affairs, each member showing different faces at every further meeting.

Cooper had grown in her estimation, especially in regards to how he was slowly building up the team – she had mostly been forced to watch from the side-lines, thanks to her stint on the Taskforce, but that had merely afforded her the best view as she watched her new boss coax the Red Cell Unit into a real team.

She'd watched him ease Prophet back into the routine of police work, to cases and procedures, to conduct becoming a _'good'_ law enforcement officer – slowly but surely, Cooper had been trying to wheedle the prison mentality away from the man, while at the same time honing the survival instincts that Simms had picked up inside. Beth saw and admired the agent Prophet was becoming under Cooper's tutelage, and was sure that his _'pending'_ status would be short-lived.

She had grown to enjoy Prophet's quiet company, his soft accent and dry delivery providing many an amusing moment, much needed in the aftermath of a long day. He was more reserved than the rest of the team, thoughtful and content to sit back and mull things over before adding his own two cents, although Beth could see him slowly opening up and becoming more secure in his position, more willing to impart his own opinion and happier to join in with the teasing.

His more laid-back approach could, however, quickly disappear when his passions were ignited and Beth could see that Sam still had concerns in that regard. Every case they had worked so far that involved vulnerable women and children had Prophet on the offensive – whether that was because they still had such a profound impact or whether he was simply uncomfortable with the extra scrutiny he faced on those cases was anyone’s guess. Hopefully, he would heed Cooper's words of advice and allow his teammates to run interference on those more challenging of occasions until he was able to better handle it.

She'd seen how Cooper had slowly coaxed Gina out her naivety, introduced her to the way the FBI worked in the real world and outside of Academy ideals. He had explained what was expected of her and he had already ironed out some of the early kinks common to rookies, aware that only experience would do the rest, and Sam did it all without taking away from her basic nature. Gina's compassion, her empathy, her blind dedication and commitment to the job were all nurtured by Sam, encouraged and strengthened – what would be seen by some in the Bureau as weaknesses were commandeered and held high as strengths by Agent Cooper.

There was still a certain vulnerability to Gina that Beth found both endearing and worrying. The young blonde was fiercely passionate about her work and sometimes found it hard to disassociate herself from the harder days full of tragic victims – the ability to compartmentalise would be invaluable to anyone who was considering work in the BAU long-term. Beth struggled to see that skill cementing itself in the younger woman any time soon, and could only hope that it was something that would grow with time and experience.

With Mick, Sam had exhibited unwavering patience as he took the younger man through the more academic requirements that FBI Brass insisted on. Cooper especially focused on the intricacies of the US legal system, filling in all the blanks that the full course at the Academy would have done had the Welshman been enrolled – Mick, although very intelligent, had very little patience for the banalities of convoluted legalese and had more than a few choice words to describe the justice system. Beth had the distinct feeling that some of the distain he held for the law came from a much darker place in his life but she didn't yet know the Welshman well enough to ask about his past.

However, although a novice at policing compared to Cooper, Simms and herself, Mick was not entirely untested. Beth understood that a lot of what Mick got up to with British Special Forces would remain forever a secret, but one of the things he _had_ explained was the time he spent doing his counter-terrorism rotations with the Regiment, which Beth had found fascinating considering her job on the CT Taskforce.

He had been trained in many different aspects associated with counter-terrorism, including anti-hijacking, close quarter battle training, siege-breaking, hostage rescue and hostage negotiation. Some of those skills would likely not be required for his time with the BAU, others, such as the hostage rescue and negotiation training would certainly come in handy at some stage, as they were or twisted to fit the relevant situation.

If Beth was being honest with herself, she was quietly relieved that they had a member of the team with such an extreme skill-set under his belt, all too aware due to her own time with the CT Taskforce just how quickly things could go to hell and how much the odds improved with a high level of training behind the operatives involved – of course, she would never tell Mick any of that and risk further stroking his ego.

During his time on CT rotation, Mick had worked closely with several different law enforcement agencies, from the regular police, to Scotland Yard and Special Branch, from British Military Intelligence to foreign intelligence services, to Interpol and Europol and even the UN police. His far-reaching contacts had already helped her out of a jam with her Taskforce assignment and his familiarity with cross-jurisdictional nightmares and his military career had him better prepared to playing well as part of a team than most.

His military training already had him well-versed in interrogations, albeit ones that would not necessarily pass muster with any decent defence attorney, and his counter-interrogation skills meant that he had an edge over the others when the UnSubs and their own natural profiling abilities came to the fore. Mick also worked seamlessly with Sam in questioning suspects and witnesses alike, their long familiarity with each other and their knowledge in the art of interrogation creating an easy flow.

Those skills, added to his seemingly endless ability at reading people, made it easy to see why Cooper thought the young sniper would be well-suited to law-enforcement in general and the BAU in particular.

On a more personal note, Beth still didn't really feel like she knew the man – Mick kept quiet on just about everything even remotely personal and brushed away the more upsetting cases with a joke, a beer and usually a one-night stand. The distance didn't bother her too much in that his own reluctance to open up had him steering around the more personal questions that she, too, wanted to avoid – she was enjoying the camaraderie of her new team but they were still far from being the kind of friends that shared everything.

However, best of friends or not, the Welshman's absence had been sorely felt after four weeks, by _all_ of them.

Mick had been the main instigator in getting Prophet out of his mistrustful prison-shaped mentality, taking him to the bar for a quick drink and some easy company or to the gym mats when a bad case had brought the older man's demons to the forefront of his mind. Mick had been helping to ease the man back into the realities of civilian life, something he was more than used to doing himself when returning from long tours of duty overseas, and the bonds forged between them created an easy camaraderie, almost enviably so, and their constant back and forth of banter in the office frequently served to lighten the mood for everyone.

Gina and Mick shared a lot of banter too – although it frequently lacked the complicity shared between the sniper and Prophet, the tone altogether more biting and pointed, it was clear that the two youngest members were fast becoming friends. They both called the other out on their bullshit while at the same time covering each other's backs, and uniting to watch everyone else's.

Beth knew that there were a lot of people just waiting for the Red Cell to fail, and she also knew that Mick and Gina had been on the receiving end of most of that backtalk during their classes at the Academy, where they had spent a lot of time in their first few months preparing for the job. Prophet, due to his experience with Philly PD, had escaped the cruel remarks after only a short stint at the Academy, but everyone was aware that the two youngest members had been united in defending the ex-cop's reputation. Both Gina and Mick were fiercely protective, and it was clear that the Welshman valued loyalty highly and that allowed him to see past their bickering and see his teammate in a very positive light – their combined effort to defend Prophet had brought them closer, showing them what united them rather than what divided them.

Beth had also found herself missing the mischievous sniper – she enjoyed tossing insults around with him, teasing him and even occasionally joining forces against one of the others. Having spent most of her career known as _'that opinionated bitch'_ , amongst other things, Beth was taking some time getting used to a team that actually sought out and seemingly enjoyed interaction with her, and Mick's easy manner was a huge step towards making her more comfortable with it all – his absence had wrong-footed her, given her pause as she realised just how much further she had to go until she could truly feel at ease with her new team and their attitude towards her.

But it was with Cooper that the wear and tear was most obvious – the entire team knew that the two men were close through a shared past, but it wasn't until Mick was suddenly gone from their midst that they truly understood just what a grounding factor he was for the older man.

With Mick no longer around, Cooper's darker moods increased in both frequency and severity, compounded, no doubt, by his constant concern over the welfare of his friend. Although the remaining teammates had done what they could to pick Sam out of the dark, it quickly became apparent that they lacked Mick's keen understanding of the man's moods and how to handle them. They had tried to help the lead agent but found it hard to match Mick's handling of the man – the Welshman could be quietly empathetic one minute and calling Cooper out on his bullshit the next, always able to see exactly what it was the older man needed from him.

The rest of them didn't yet know the subtle clues hidden away in Cooper's tone of voice, his body posture, the tilt of the head or a raised eyebrow, even the words he used, all cues that Rawson had long since learnt. Gina had found it particularly hard to see the very real evidence of the demons that continued to haunt her mentor while being unable to do anything about it, but her compassion for the man won over any lingering jealousy she had at the obvious familiarity between the two men – she simply wanted the sniper back in DC to drag Cooper back from the brink.

"Come on," Beth said, standing up slowly. "If you all want to go and get Mick and be there for him for the next few days then you should probably try to wrap up the paperwork on your last case, and I should get back and finish up my latest threat assessment."

"Sounds like fun," Gina managed to laugh dryly, even though the disquiet lingering in her eyes showed her mind was far from settled.

"We'll come get you before we head out," Prophet offered when it was clear that Cooper wasn't going to answer. "Then we can bring Mick back to where he belongs."

* * *

The base was loud and busy despite the late hour and the darkness of night. They'd seen the plane land, but due to security restrictions they could not actually approach the aircraft – they waited not-so-patiently, surrounded by various excited family members eagerly awaiting the return of their loved ones and various local news outlets, eager to catch the next day's headlines with images of the returning heroes.

Gina was straining her neck, looking carefully at every face that caught the flicker of the bright lights that surrounded the airstrip, frown deepening every time that it wasn't her teammate. Beth was trying to hide her nervousness, choosing instead to focus on the excited rabble surrounding them. Prophet hung back a little, keeping a close eye on Sam, who had been virtually mute since they'd picked Beth up from Quantico. Cooper was staring straight ahead at the aircraft, unwilling to let the surrounding chaos distract him. There were shouts of joy and many tears as families were finally reunited, but Sam ignored it all, waiting for the familiar silhouette of his friend.

Cooper knew the protocols regarding British Special Forces, knew that they tended to be the last off the planes, avoiding the media at all costs in an effort to maintain their anonymity. He knew that Mick would follow the same procedures here, the habit too well ingrained into him to do anything else while he still served in the Regiment. Eventually, as the crowds died down and happily reunited families headed home, he caught sight of someone that could only be the Welsh sniper slowly making his way over to them with another man in uniform.

"You alright?" Sam asked rather redundantly as he took in the hunched, stiff figure and haunted, pain-filled eyes of his friend.

Mick opened his mouth to answer but could not find the words, so he simply closed his mouth and nodded wearily.

"You want anything? Need anything? Or do you just want to get some shut-eye?" Sam wondered gently. He'd seen his friend back after missions gone wrong before, and sometimes, despite the curious psychologist in him wanting to get to the heart of the matter, sleep was the priority.

"Just get him home to his bed," the stranger said before turning to Mick. There were a few moments of silence as the two soldiers regarded each other before the stranger nodded, a small, melancholic smile dancing briefly across his face. "Alright, well I'll see you soon," the stranger stated rather than asked. "And remember…call me if you need _anything_ , ok? We'll go for a few drinks once you're feeling up for it."

"Thanks, Neil," Mick nodded and offered his hand only to be brought in for a gentle bear-hug. The interplay was a stark reminder to the Red Cell that their teammate belonged to a whole other world, one miles away from the FBI and one that they had little access to or understanding of, and there was nothing they could do about it. They watched Neil go, wondering who he was and what had been said in the silence between the two soldiers, but no one thought it the time to press Mick for answers about anything.

"Bed?" Sam asked, double-checking with his friend that that was indeed what he wanted.

"Please," Mick quietly implored, his voice low and hoarse.

"Mick?" Gina asked tentatively.

Her teammate looked truly awful – there was a long gash down the left side of his face along his hairline that had been crudely stitched, likely out in the field, and the black eye was only one bruise of many that marred his features. Mick had lost weight too, and on his already too-thin frame, the difference in body mass was substantial. His left arm was in a sling and judging by the way he was carefully curled in on himself, he'd taken damage to his chest and side, too.

Only four weeks and Mick could be reduced to this?

"Hey," came a gravelly greeting. The Welshman tried to muster a smile, but it had been a weak attempt at best. He didn't really know what to say, and honestly, he was too tired to try and formulate anything – he needed sleep before anything else, then he could worry about wiping those frowns off everyone's face.

"Give me that," Prophet demanded, taking one of Mick's bags from his right shoulder, which in turn prompted Gina to silently reach for his rifle case.

"Yeah," Beth began. "So anyway…that bag on your back looks heavy, and I'm not even going to _pretend_ to offer to carry it and break my own damn back in the process...but at least I thought about it, if that means anything."

"Thanks," Mick snorted softly, glad that at least one of them wasn't looking at him like he was made of glass.

"Come on," Coop said quietly as he placed a hand gently on Mick's shoulder, trying to ignore the way the younger man flinched under him. "You're staying in my spare room tonight."

"You _do_ remember I've got my own apartment here now, right?" Mick asked.

"Not up for debate," Sam stated firmly.

"Fair enough," Mick nodded. "But you even think about trying to tuck me in and I'm burning your entire jazz collection."

"I _will_ get you to appreciate jazz one of these days," Sam countered fondly.

"Not a chance, mate," Mick disagreed with more energy than he'd felt in days, finding comfort in the familiar presence of his friend…his _friends_ , he amended as he took in the rest of his teammates.

Prophet and Beth shared an amused look, relief at the banter seeping through every bone – Mick looked like he'd been through hell, but he was still _'Mick'_ enough to tease Sam about his mother-hen tendencies and more. The Welshman looked far from being classed as _'alright'_ , but there were at least clues that suggested he would be in the end.

* * *

Mick had been back in the States for almost four days before venturing any further than Sam's apartment. He'd slept for the first two days, only moving to go to the bathroom and to eat and drink whatever Coop put in front of him. He still felt a heavy ache in his chest every time he moved, and there was a leadenness to his every step that gave him a strangely detached feeling, but he was beginning to feel a little more like himself.

Cooper had taken a couple of days off work that had Mick feeling both touched and aggravated – he had been looking after himself since he lost his parents and he had no need for a nursemaid, but at the same time it was comforting to know that Sam's concern for his welfare had him prepared to go that extra mile.

Day three saw Mick cooped up on Sam's sofa, fielding calls to friends back in the UK. The first call he'd made had been to Danny rather than Jenna – he had avoided seeing them by taking a flight from Germany straight back to the US and he knew that he was in trouble for it.

He hadn't told Jenna that he'd been sent overseas on an operation but with Danny's contacts inside the Regiment it was easy to see how she'd found out – his little sister had been furious, partly at not being informed directly, but also because she had been so sure that his new role would see him in a much safer position. But whether she liked it or not, Mick's skill with a rifle was still unrivalled in the Regiment and his other skills were far from lacking – he had been the ideal candidate to lead the latest mission, and despite how it turned out, he was glad to have been there for it as it had been _his_ shot that had ended the whole sorry affair.

He'd managed to talk them out of coming to visit him, barely, and had assured them that he was more tired than anything else. Danny had quietly called bullshit on that, had informed him that he already knew Mick had been hurt, that he knew he'd lost friends and been exposed to some truly atrocious sights – thankfully, the former soldier had not shared any of that with Jenna and so spared Mick another lecture about the perils of Army-life from his sister.

Danny's own experience with military life gave him an understanding of the situation that his sister would never have – Wallcroft had known that his friend wasn't ready to talk about it and even lacked the energy to hide behind any and all pretences that everything was fine, hence the avoidance. Having known Mick for so many years, Danny knew when to push and when to hold off, and while he had made it clear that he was going to give the Welshman his space, he also let Mick know that he would not leave it alone for long, nor would he hold back Jenna forever.

After Mick had put out those particular forest fires via several long-distance phone calls, having discounted video-calling until the marks on his face had subsided somewhat, Mick was at a loss as to what he should do. Sam had already made it more than clear that Mick was not going back to work until he had been cleared for duty by a doctor – even desk work had been outlawed until Coop felt better about his friend's mental status.

He'd not felt particularly sociable and so was content enough to while away the hours watching crappy daytime TV and snoozing on Cooper's comfortably worn leather sofa for the first few days. However, his new team had decided that they needed to get Mick out and about and focused on something other than his time away, so after four days of allowing him to regroup, they descended on Cooper's apartment one by one.

Sam had been reluctant at first, only taking him as far as the coffee shop on the corner, skirting around any topic even remotely related to the military as he allowed his friend to recover somewhat before bombarding him with the many unanswered questions that were swirling around his head. While the older man knew more about military life than the others on the team, and therefore had a better idea of what might have happened, his understanding was the very thing saving Mick from any invasive questions while he composed himself.

Gina and Beth had appeared together one lunch time, dragging him a little further afield and buying him a meal – an impossibly overloaded plate that he couldn't possibly hope to clear on a good day, never mind after a month of being short-changed on MREs! Mick could see the curiosity burning in their eyes, noticed that every time Gina looked as though she were about to ask something, something that he couldn't or simply _wouldn't_ answer, Beth would give the blonde a sharp look or an even sharper elbow. He appreciated Beth reining in the other woman – while he took some comfort in their concern for him, he simply didn't want to rehash things with either one of them.

Prophet, while concerned for his friend, was not as delicate about it all as Coop had been, and the lack of kid-gloves had been a real saving grace – the man had not only got him out of the flat, but out of the city. Mick had snapped at Coop, the constant hovering driving him to the brink of insanity, and the next day Prophet had shown up and offered an escape – he'd taken an afternoon off and driven Mick to the wide-open countryside to the west of DC, giving beautiful views of the mountains in the distance. Most of the drive, Prophet had been content to travel without sharing a word and Mick had been more grateful than he could express – he liked the easy silence that existed between them and the absolute lack of hovering had allowed him to gather his thoughts somewhat before talking to the older man.

" _Sometimes it seems like he forgets where I come from," Mick had complained quietly with a heavy sigh as they were returning to DC, driving through the suburbs._

" _What do you mean?" Prophet asked._

" _The British Army, I guess," Mick pointed out with a shrug. "I mean, it's not like I came here to the FBI thinking life was full of unicorns and daisies where everyone lives in peace and harmony…Christ, I wasn't exactly living risk free_ before _I signed up to a life of high-powered rifles and IEDs! I've seen a lot of shit, true enough, but I've always been fine in the long run – sometimes I might need a little time to get my head screwed back on properly, but I've always got there in the end, and I don't need Coop…_ anybody _to treat me like I'm made of glass."_

" _Maybe that's part of the problem," Prophet offered hesitantly, wanting to comfort his new friend but not yet entirely sure how well his words of advice might be received by the younger man._

" _What do you mean?" Mick sounded more curious than annoyed, and Prophet took that as a good enough sign to continue._

" _Maybe he doesn't want you to have to struggle through anything else. You two have been friends for who knows how many years, and your job comes with a lot of risk, a lot of danger…"_

" _The BAU isn't exactly_ much _safer, mate," Mick pointed out dryly. "You remember that case in Cleveland? The one where you nearly got your head taken off by that mountain of a man?"_

" _I remember," Prophet laughed. It hadn't been funny at the time, seeing the huge and truly psychotic UnSub come charging at him all fired up and yelling about demons, but laughing about it was a better alternative, better than thinking too deeply about what might have happened had Mick and Gina_ not _been on hand to help subdue the disturbed man._

" _Coop had us_ all _on the naughty step that day," Mick grinned at the memory – he'd enjoyed seeing Cooper's mother-hen tendencies directed at someone other than him…well, someone other than_ just _him. Prophet had managed to look chastened while somewhat bemused, not entirely sure how to take Cooper's concern, while Gina had looked very much like a little girl in trouble, scuffing her shoes in the dirt and staring intently at the ground while mumbling an apology that was more about appeasing her mentor than expressing any actual remorse._

" _He had a point," Prophet looked meaningfully at the younger man. "Both you and Gina put yourselves in needless danger…"_

" _It wasn't_ 'needless' _," Mick interrupted, irritation leaking into his voice. "He was coming after_ you _…because you_ deliberately _tried to draw his attention!"_

" _I had to get him away from that kid, and you could always have just_ shot _him," Prophet pointed out. "You didn't have to tackle him and put yourselves in danger like that!"_

" _That corridor was dark and narrow as hell and we couldn't see where you or the kid were – do you honestly think we should have fired blindly and hoped it didn't go through and kill one of you, too?" Mick demanded._

" _All I'm saying is that you tackled the guy despite the fact he had at least two hundred pounds on you and was so far beyond insane and ridiculously doped up that he wasn't feeling_ any _pain, and he could have caused you both some real damage," Prophet tried to explain. "He_ did _cause you some real damage!" Truth be told, if he had been on the other side of the UnSub with either Gina or Mick in his place, he'd have done the same thing, but he knew that on first glance, throwing yourself into the path of a violent lunatic in the middle of a psychotic break was perhaps not the sanest option._

" _A few busted ribs and the odd bruise are an easy pay-off considering what might have happened had we followed protocol to the letter," Mick replied firmly._

" _I know…thanks," Prophet offered quietly, a small smile dancing across his lips as he considered all the ways that his two younger colleagues had demonstrated just how much they had his back in their new roles as teammates._

" _But my point is, surely you must be able to see that Cooper worries about us…about_ all _of us. You're a soldier, Beth is a long-serving agent of the FBI, I've been on_ both _sides of the law and lived to talk about it and Gina has already proven that she is_ more _than capable of looking after herself…we're none of us defenceless and Cooper_ still _worries!_

" _Cooper knows better than any of us just how hard your job is in the military, what risks you face, the physical threats and the psychological ones – maybe, just maybe, he wants to do what he can to spare you another scar."_

Mick knew that there was a lot of truth in Prophet's words, could understand why Cooper, who had seen him at his worst in the aftermath of his capture, would see it as his duty as a friend to deter Mick from staying in the Army long-term and risk another stint as a POW or worse. He also knew that Cooper, while a man of pointed words, saw action as the way to lead things forward – offering Mick a job was Coop's way of taking his concern _beyond_ mere words and finding as viable a solution as possible, because he surely knew the sniper would _never_ agree to a life behind a desk as an alternative.

Life in the BAU was far from stale. There _was_ paperwork, but no more than he had had to do in the Army – while after-action reports had been replaced with case files, in the main, his job was one of analysis followed by action followed by further analysis, much as it had been before.

In the Army, there would be a mission briefing, where every scrap of available intel that was relevant to the operation was laid out and analysed in order to draw up a plan of attack. Sometimes there would be further recon work, watching the target or potential hotspots, and sometimes there was simply no time – a quick insertion followed by a seat-of-your-pants extraction. Afterwards, there would be a solid debriefing, where actions and opportunities, both hit _and_ missed, would be discussed so that the next mission with similar parameters could be deemed a greater success with far less risk involved.

In the BAU, there was almost always a crime first, which allowed the Red Cell Unit something to analyse – all available resources were used to draw up an initial profile, a primary plan of action that allowed them to close in on their UnSub. Sometimes they could acquire their target through a simple process of elimination without any fuss and without any further casualties. Sometimes, a devolving UnSub put the best laid plans to waste and the team simply had to wing it. Afterwards, there would be paperwork to fill in and occasionally an addition would be made to ViCAP, in an effort to refocus future investigations.

There _were_ similarities, something Mick would never have suspected when Coop had first offered him the job. What was more, he _liked_ the work, it was challenging and it could be familiar or it could be something entirely different – in the Army, he had profiled many a target, potential or realised, and there had always been something exhilarating about being the one on the frontlines seeing everything unfold. There was a similar thrill with the BAU, but there was also something _more_.

The rewards of a successful op. in the Army were not always tangible, whereas in the BAU, there was a more realised success. Names and faces of the people they had saved from the clutches of a madman could be quantified in cold hard statistics – in the military, you could _know_ that you had saved people from a spate of IEDs in the local area, you could be _certain_ that you had averted yet another terrorist attack on the civilian population, but they were still nameless, faceless _possible_ casualties.

There had, of course, always been a tremendous sense of pride with every successful operation in the military, but the more tangible evidence of success that the BAU afforded inevitably allowed for a greater sense of achievement. While Mick was still uncertain as to what, exactly, his future held for him in regards to the military or the FBI, he could not deny that there was a certain appeal about the work he did for the BAU, and the veritable successes that they had managed so far meant that he would _never_ regret accepting Cooper's offer.

* * *

It had been four weeks since Mick had been cleared for duty by the doctors, and two weeks since Cooper had allowed him to return to his apartment and do anything more than ride a desk at work before a short case in Baltimore saw him brought fully back into the field – of course, the team were still tip-toeing around him regarding his missing month with the Army.

Since his return, Mick had only seen his new team in dribs and drabs outside of work – he was certain Cooper had been behind that, and for once the Welshman was grateful for the mother-bear routine, as he'd needed the time to get his head on straight before facing a crowd, especially a crowd of highly trained profilers. That night, however, it had clearly been decided that he was ready for a more social setting and that the entire team needed to go out for drinks together and unwind after a long and somewhat brutal case in Denver.

Of course, Mick suspected the impromptu gathering was mainly due to the fact that Gina's infamous impatience had won over Cooper's protective instincts through a simple war of attrition – her stubborn streak made the rest of them look downright accommodating. Well, ok, no…not _all_ of them – Mick's pretty sure Beth had them _all_ beaten in the race for _'BAU's Most Obstinate Agent'_.

So it was that the sniper found himself in their regular bar, somewhat uncomfortable with the obvious albeit silent profiling going on around him while they tried to pretend that everything was normal and he was desperately trying to maintain his poker face. On the bright side, it was the first time that he had been allowed near anything even _vaguely_ resembling alcohol since he'd returned to the States. Cooper normally kept a few beers in his fridge for the odd shared meal or nights of quiet reflection, but the moment the older man had seen the strength of Mick's painkillers, as well as the sniper's rather liberal approach to recommended dosages, all alcohol had mysteriously vanished and trips to their local haunt had all but ceased.

He could still see Cooper carefully and quietly calculating every drop of alcohol that passed his lips, a frown making its way across his forehead before smoothing it out with some effort, determined as he was that Mick relax back into the company of his FBI team. They had all agreed to keep topics neutral, allowing Mick to make the first step. Unfortunately, given their work and their common reluctance to get too personal with their life stories, talking shop was the natural outcome.

While Beth shared a little of what she had been up to with the Taskforce, Coop, Prophet and Gina talked about the cases they had worked when Mick was out of the country, listing the UnSubs and their violent histories. It was slightly surreal to hear serial killers and the like being talked about with such indifference – while Mick was fully aware that none of them were as unaffected as they liked to pretend, it still seemed bizarre to hear triggers and psychoses being listed and ticked off as though they were talking about the latest trip to the grocery store.

The sniper caught the way they kept on glancing at him, as though waiting for the moment he would decide to share something, but Mick obviously had to keep his mouth shut regarding his latest mission for the Army, and so sat quietly supping on his beer as the others carried on filling him in on their last few cases. The Welshman was perfectly content to sit back and listen, and while the entire affair seemed somewhat subdued compared to normal, he was not particularly bothered about trying to liven it up.

Having spent the entirety of his military career in Special Forces, Mick had always been limited with what he could and could not talk about, even with his nearest and dearest, and the typical campfire stories that tended to make the rounds were one of the few safe areas of conversation. That said, a lot of the joking in the mess tent after a patrol was about distancing oneself from the military – sometimes, soldiers shared stories of home or of the weird and wonderful things they got up to during their last leave, tossing insults at one another or sharing details of sexual conquests and inadequacies in equal measure.

Most of the stories were wild enough without the typical embellishments of adrenaline-ridden soldiers, so Mick was used to trying to tone down the banter once he returned from duty – while his sister could swear with the best of them, she was less appreciative of the typical male bragging that was part and parcel of everyday military life, and Mick was more than happy not to share those sorts of stories with his baby sister.

Here with his team at the BAU, only Sam knew the true nature of life in the military, the good and the bad and all of the ways people tried to cope with it, and he had never been one to be bothered by the constant game of one-upmanship and the to-and-fro of insults that were casually tossed around base. And yet, even Coop had the watered-down version.

Cooper hadn't gone through full military training, so he had missed out on the bonding experience that provided, and while he had been embedded with the military, Sam had never been a soldier – being embedded with the Marine Corps and his job with Intelligence meant that Sam had seen some of the gruesome realities of military life, but he was always a separate entity, even inside his own Unit. Mick knew that that in itself had to have come with its own set of hardships, leaving Sam as a constant outsider, and that was a feeling Mick very much understood.

During the time he spent stuck in foster care or his time on the streets, Mick knew what it was to feel lost and without – without a home, without a family, without something or someone to help reaffirm your own identity, your own worth. Because of his past, he had always felt like something of an outsider – those who knew the gruesome details tended to treat him differently, sometimes with care and caution, other times with pity, sometimes even with mistrust, and those who didn't know…well, it was hardly a story that Mick looked forward to telling, and so it was that there was always a gap…space created by an obvious and inescapable void of facts.

His new team knew the bare minimum about his personal life, and he wasn't particularly bothered about changing that – his constant feeling of being an outsider looking in was, therefore, likely to remain. However, he also knew that each and every one of them was damaged in some way – with Prophet, the reasons were perhaps a little more obvious due to his more recent history, but Mick could tell that the man's hardships were not a new hurdle to overcome. It was evident in the way he talked and the way he carried himself, and it was obvious from the way he connected with certain people more than others, that he had struggled through more than just a bad hand, had, in fact, been back-handed by life on more than one occasion.

With Beth, her guardedness, her frequent disbelief when she was listened to intently by her new team, the awkwardness she felt during the more personable occasions all pointed to someone with serious issues of self-worth. Mick had heard one or two grumblings during his time in the FBI, knew that she had a bit of a reputation as a take-no-prisoners bitch and that her contributions hadn't always been accepted or even appreciated, but so far he had seen no reason to doubt her, and he could only hope that some time on a _real_ team, a team that looked out for one another, would help to remedy that, but he was not so naïve as to think that would bring an end to her problems.

Gina's most frequent source of internal conflict came, rather obviously, from that most frequent of causes – Daddy Issues. That it was so a common a point of origin in the world's damaged psyches did nothing to diminish the severity of it – after all, who but a parent could cause such long-lasting and impressionable hurts. He knew that Cooper was filling a role for her, a strong male figure in her life that she looked up to and admired who had yet to let her down. Mick also knew that it was only a matter of time, the cynic in him too firmly entrenched to believe that anyone could ever escape disappointing someone at some stage in their life.

With Cooper, Mick was more than aware that the darkness was all too firmly entrenched, too deeply embedded in the older man's psyche to ever truly be considered whole again. Messed up childhood aside, the profiler had lived through the horrors of the job while at the BAU for many years before seeking to escape it in all the wrong places, especially during his time with the military. Coop spent his time trying to atone for the wrongs he felt he had helped to perpetuate during his time working with Intelligence as well as make up for any perceived failures from his first stint inside the FBI. The visible toll his frequent trips to the dark side took were easily visible on his face and acted as the primary impetus for people to keep their distance, while those few brave enough to wade past that were held back by Coop himself, at arm's length as his intensity and his very demeanour increased the distance, both literally and figuratively.

So the team was made up of the imperfect, and maybe he _was_ an outsider looking in, but he felt that the whole team were a bunch of outsiders, misfits looking to find a place to belong to, a purpose to fight for, a reason to believe in something _more_. They still had a long way to go to work out the kinks, to become a team in more than name only, but Mick had seen many of the gaps close in his absence.

Cooper was still a broody mess after the worst of cases, but the others were more willing to step in and try to help, do what they could to distract him and support him, whereas before they would nervously stand by and wring their hands while Mick did what he could for his friend.

Beth was still attached to the Task Force, but given that she seemed to spend an increasingly large amount of her free time with the Red Cell, it was safe to say that she was getting more comfortable with her new team and vice versa.

Prophet was still overly contemplative on occasion and prone to bouts of self-imposed isolation, but he had fallen back into civilian life with a greater degree of ease than many of the soldiers Mick knew, and was beginning to relax and share his thoughts and his quiet sense of humour with the rest of them.

Gina was still striving to prove herself, to Coop, to her father and to herself, but the desperation behind it had dulled somewhat as she settled into her new job, quietly gaining the confidence behind her natural talents and understanding that her selection had little to do with her surname.

Mick enjoyed spending time with them all, from Cooper's familiar and comforting presence to Beth's more abrasive and sarcastic one, from Gina's smirks and jibes directed towards his personal life to Prophet's camaraderie and big brother tendencies. On the worst of days on the job to the quiet moments over a shared take-out and beer, they were becoming more than a team, and more than friends – Mick felt like he was slowly finding himself another family.

"You're such an asshole!" Beth said dismissively in response to something Prophet had said to her, his teasing smile and quiet chuckles animating his usual placid façade. Gina giggled behind her drink in an effort to hide from the brunette, and Sam shook his head in open amusement.

"I don't know what you mean," Prophet offered without sincerity.

Mick smiled and leaned back in his seat, shaking his head at the feigned indignant tone in his friend's voice. Things had changed so much over the past ten months – ten months ago, when Cooper had come to him with the offer of a job inside the BAU, Mick had been beyond pissed off with the man, angry at the constant dismissive tones used to talk about his career in the military and at the seemingly casual manipulation of their friendship. But over time, with a little help from the few trusted friends he had, he knew and understood that Cooper had merely being doing what he could to try and help him out of what the FBI Agent perceived to be a life that would see him dead before his thirtieth birthday. Mick still wasn't sure whether or not the FBI would be a part of his long-term plan but for now, with his new team, his new family by his side, it was so much more than he could ever have imagined.

"There's something I need to talk about with you all before we go home," Sam finally interrupted the gentle ribbing. "The BAU has a potential case in San Francisco that I want to explore a little more."

"What case?" Gina asked, leaning forward with intrigue having heard nothing about a possible trip to the Golden Gate city.

"Around the same time each year, several homeless men turn up dead in San Francisco's Tenderloin District, and also around the same time each year, a father and daughter go missing – my gut tells me that this is more than just a coincidence. I'm going to talk to Hotchner in the morning, see if he agrees that my theory holds water – if he does then I intend to fly out to San Francisco and work the secondary angle. I'm giving you the option to join me."

"There a problem?" Mick asked, sensing his friend's reticence – normally there would be little question of them joining him on a case.

"The Director hasn't approved our involvement and Strauss is certainly against it," Sam informed them. "Beth, I know you'll be stuck in DC, but for the rest of you…"

"You're giving us an out?" Gina demanded, almost incredulously.

"What, you _don't_ want us to work the case with you?" Prophet asked somewhat bewildered.

"You're worried about the fallout," Mick stated, correctly interpreting the reason behind Coop's reluctance.

"I don't want to drag any of you into trouble with the Director," Sam agreed. "Especially not over _my_ gut instinct. We're not exactly on stable ground here even after all this time – there are still a lot of people out there just waiting for us to fail and give the Director a reason to shut us down. Going against his orders? Pissing off Strauss? Those are reasons enough."

"So…basically, you've spent all this time making us a team and when it actually counts you want us to ignore that?" Prophet asked somewhat bemusedly.

"I won't let you follow me blindly into trouble," Sam corrected her.

"We wouldn't _be_ following you blindly into trouble," Gina pointed out, somewhat annoyed by the insinuation that they would.

Mick and Sam shared a discreet look at that, both aware of just how much Gina had already risked to follow Coop into the BAU – one more foray onto dangerous ground was not exactly unthinkable.

"Regardless, I just want you to be aware of the facts before committing what could potentially be career-suicide."

"I reckon they'll be too pissed at you to be all that pissed off with us, mate," Mick stated wryly and not altogether incorrectly. "Besides, I've seen your gut instinct in action before – I trust that over anything the Brass might dream up."

"Me too," Prophet agreed quickly. Coop had done entirely too much for him, and turning his back on the man now seemed more than just ungrateful.

"Me three," Gina added. She trusted Cooper more than her own father, and if he thought there was something worth investigating then she did not doubt him even for one second.

"Well…I _would_ go," Beth pointed out dryly. "But if I don't show up at the Task Force tomorrow, I really _will_ be fired."

"I guess we should get an early night, then," Prophet said standing up.

"Killjoy," Mick muttered defiantly, sharing a look with Gina that silently lamented being surrounded by _'oldies'_.

"I'll call Hotchner, have him meet me at the gym tomorrow morning," Sam informed them, also standing up and smiling at the way the team had united.

"I've never been to San Francisco," Mick said as he shrugged his way into his coat.

"Oh man," Prophet exclaimed, "San Quentin aside, it is an incredible city, really beautiful!"

"And the women?" Mick asked slyly.

"Urgh!" Gina made a noise of disgust as she threw her hands up into the air, exasperation and something else that the Welshman couldn't pinpoint flashing across her features, but he enjoyed the fact that he had ruffled her feathers so easily, sharing a grin with Prophet as Gina pushed her way past them both.

"We'll be working," Sam pointed out, a knowing smile on his face as he caught the mischievous glint in his friend's eyes.

"All work and no play…" Mick left the sentence hanging, shaking his head amusedly as he headed through the crowd for the door, Prophet talking animatedly about _the_ best Chinese restaurant in the city, having quickly decided that a change in topic might be in order to appease the aggravated blonde.

"I'm sorry I'm going to miss this one," Beth said sincerely, her eyes following the rest of her team as they made their way towards the exit, shaking her head at the bickering that had just started up about Chinese food versus Thai. "I've heard only good things about Hotchner and his team."

"They're the best at what they do," Sam agreed.

"And we are…?"

"…something else – the Red Cell _is_ part of the BAU, make no mistake about it, but if it was exactly the same then there would be no need for its creation as Hotchner's team would be more than enough. So, we're a little different, a little unorthodox maybe, but hopefully we'll be the best at it, too, given a little more time," Sam suggested. He, too, watched as the rest of the team pushed their way through the door while Mick started in on the merits of Vietnamese food, seemingly much to Gina's annoyance. "Of course, there are days when I sincerely doubt that."

"No you don't," Beth replied easily with a grin.

It was clear that Cooper had taken the venture to heart, believing to his very core that the team he had assembled could save lives and become one of the most useful tools in the FBI's arsenal. It was an odd mix of people, a group with many, _many_ kinks still to iron out, but the foundations were there and they were solid, centred as they were around Sam to bind them all together.

It would take a few more cases, a few more bumps along the road, but they would weather the storm together – Mick's most recent brush with death had shown just how easily that idea came to them all, with each and every one of them willing and able to step up to the plate without a moment's hesitation, and do all that could be done for the team. Sam Cooper had taken a group of damaged, cynical individuals, each with their own unique set of problems and written off by more than just a few as hopeless cases, and he had helped to create something special.

"You're far too stubborn to see this fail, and I'm pretty sure that you think this is the best thing you could have ever done in your career."

"I don't know why," Sam stated, smiling as he watched through the window to where Gina deftly whacked Mick up the left side of his head while Prophet, desperately trying not to laugh, tried to act as mediator only to receive twin glares from both the younger agents at some unwelcome comment he had made in an effort to diffuse the situation. "But yeah, I do."

"Try to keep Hotchner's team alive through this case of yours – if things go south with the Red Cell, maybe he'll give me the next open slot on his team," Beth offered cheekily.

"I'll tell Mick to pack his rifle," Sam nodded.

"That wasn't quite what I meant," Beth shook her head bemusedly, looking through the window to where the rest of her teammates were seemingly taking great joy in riling each other up. "Look out San Francisco," she muttered under her breath as she headed out towards her teammates.

Sam heard her and laughed. It felt good and it felt right, having his team all together again, moving past the awkwardness of the past two months that saw Mick both missing and returned, albeit somewhat subdued. There was no evidence of that now, as the team rallied around and helped their teammate, each in their own way. Sam had the team he'd hoped for, one he had spent almost a year creating – now he just had to prove that the Director was right to give him carte blanche, and looking at Beth, Prophet, Gina and Mick smiling and joking around together, he didn't see how he could possibly fail.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> **_And that's the end of it. Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think._ **


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